With Frederick the Great: A Story of the Seven Years' War by G. A. Henty (best classic romance novels txt) 📗

good spirits, as he always is. He bade me give this note into your hands, so that you might prepare the young countess a little, before giving it to her."

"'Tis bad news, Karl, but it might have been much worse; and it will, indeed, be a relief to us all; for since we heard of that desperate fight at Torgau, and how great was the slaughter on both sides, we have been anxious, indeed; and must have remained so, for we should have had little chance of seeing the list of the Prussian killed and wounded.

"Now, do you go into the kitchen. They all know you there. Make yourself comfortable. I will give orders that you shall be well served."

He then proceeded to the room where Thirza and her mother wore sitting. The former was pale, and had evidently been crying.

"Some news has come," he said. "Not the very best, and yet by no means the worst. Drummond is wounded--a severe wound, but not, it is confidently believed, a dangerous one."

Thirza ran to her father and threw her arms round his neck, and burst into a passion of tears. He did not attempt to check them for some little time.

"Now, my dear," he said at last, "you must be brave, or you won't be worthy of this lover of yours. There is one bad point about it."

She looked up in his face anxiously, but his smile reassured her.

"You must prepare yourself for his being somewhat disfigured."

"Oh, that is nothing, father; nothing whatever to me! But how is he disfigured?"

"Well, my dear, he has lost his left arm, at the elbow."

Thirza gave a little cry of grief and pity.

"That is sad, father; but surely it is no disfigurement, any more than that sabre scar on his face. 'Tis an honour, to a brave soldier, to have lost a limb in battle. Still, I am glad that it is his left arm; though, had it been his right and both his legs, it would have made no difference in my love for him."

"Well, I am very glad, Thirza, that your love has not been tested so severely; as I confess that, for my part, I would much prefer having a son-in-law who was able to walk about, and who would not have to be carried to the altar. Here is a letter to you from him--that is to say, which has been written at his dictation, for of course the surgeons insist on his lying perfectly quiet, at present."

Thirza tore it open, and ran through its contents.

"It is just as you say, father. He makes very light of it, and writes as if it were a mere nothing."

She handed the letter to her mother, and then turned to the count.

"Is there anything we can do, father?"

"Nothing whatever. With such a wound as that, he will have to lie perfectly still for some time. You may be sure that, as one of Frederick's personal staff, he will have every attention possible; and were we all in the town, we could do nothing. As soon as he is fit to be moved, it will be different; but we shall have plenty of time to talk over matters before that.

"For some few months travelling will be dangerous. Frederick's army is in the neighbourhood again and, as Daun and Lacy are both in their intrenchments behind the Plauen, there is no chance of his again besieging Dresden; but his flying columns will be all over the country, as doubtless will the Croats, and the roads will be altogether unsafe for travelling. No doubt, as soon as he is able to be moved, he will be taken to Frederick's headquarters, wherever they may be established. The king will assuredly have the hospitals at Torgau cleared, as soon as he can; lest, when he has retired, the Austrians might make another dash at the town."

The next morning Karl set out again, bearing a letter from the count; and one from Thirza which was of a much less formal character than that which he had dictated to her, and which, as he told her afterwards, greatly assisted his cure. A month after the battle he was pronounced fit to travel, and with a large train of wagons filled with convalescents, and under a strong escort, he was taken to Leipzig; where the king had just established his headquarters, and to which all the wounded were to be sent, as soon as they could safely be moved. Here he was established in comfortable quarters, and Karl again carried a letter to Thirza.

Ten days later Count Eulenfurst entered his room.

"You here, count!" he exclaimed. "How kind of you! What a journey to make through the snow!"

"I have been dragged hither," the count said, with a smile.

"Dragged hither, count?"

"Yes. Thirza insisted on coming to see you. Her mother declared that she should accompany her, and of course there was nothing for me to do but to set out, also."

"Are they here, then, count?" Fergus exclaimed incredulously.

"Certainly they are, and established at the Black Eagle Hotel. I could not bring them here, to a house full of officers. You are well enough to walk to the hotel?"

"Yes, indeed. I walked a mile yesterday."

As Karl was helping Fergus into his uniform, he asked:

"How long were you in coming here, count?"

"We did it in a day. I sent on relays of horses, two days before; and as the carriage is of course on runners, and the snow in good order, we made quick work of it. Your man went on with the horses, and rode with us from the last place where we changed. I did most of the journey sitting by the coachman; which gave them more room inside, and was more pleasant for me, also."

In a few minutes they reached the hotel, and the count led Fergus to a door.

"You will find Thirza alone there. We thought that you had best see her so, at first."

Half an hour later, the count and countess entered the room.

"He looks very pale and thin, mother," Thirza said, after the countess had affectionately embraced Fergus.

"You would hardly have expected to find him fat and rosy," the count laughed. "A man does not lose his arm, and go about as if the matter was not worth thinking of, a few weeks afterwards. He is certainly looking better than I expected to find him.

"That empty sleeve is a sad disfigurement, though," he added slyly.

"How can you say so, father?" Thirza exclaimed indignantly. "I think quite the contrary, and I feel quite proud of him with it."

"Well, there is no accounting for taste, Thirza. If you are satisfied, I have no reason to be otherwise.

"And now, Drummond, we want to hear all about Liegnitz and Torgau; for we have only heard the Austrian accounts. Dresden illuminated over Daun's first despatch from Torgau, saying that the Prussian attacks had been repulsed with tremendous slaughter, and a complete victory gained. The next morning there came, I believe, another despatch, but it was not published; and it was not until we heard that Daun and Lacy were both within a few miles of the town that we knew that, somehow or other, there had been a mistake about the matter, a mistake that has not yet been cleared up, at Dresden."

"The defeat part of the business I can tell you from my personal observation, the victory only from what I heard. Certainly, when I came to my senses, after the surgeons had seen to my wounds, I had no thought of anything but a disastrous defeat. Never did the Prussians fight more bravely, or more hopelessly. They had to mount a steep ascent, with four hundred cannon playing upon them; and an army, more than three times their number, waiting at the top to receive them."

He then proceeded to tell them the whole story of the battle.

"Ziethen seems to have blundered terribly," the count said.

"I believe that that is the king's opinion, too; but Ziethen himself defends his action stoutly, and maintains that he could never have succeeded in a direct attack, in broad daylight. Anyhow, as the matter came out all right in the end, the king was too well satisfied to do no more than grumble at him.

"The other was a hard-fought battle, too."

"The news of that was a relief to us, indeed," the count said. "It seemed to everyone that Frederick was so completely caught in the toils that he could not hope to extricate himself. As you know, in this war I have, all along, held myself to be a neutral. I considered that the plot to overthrow Frederick and partition the kingdom was a scandalous one, and that the king disgraced himself and us by joining in it; but since that time, my sympathies have become more and more strongly with Frederick. It is impossible not to admire the manner in which he has defended himself. Moreover, the brutality with which the Confederates and Austrians, wherever their armies penetrated Saxony, treated the Protestants, made one regard him as the champion of Protestantism.

"He was wrong in forcing the Saxons to take service with him in his army, after their surrender at Pirna; and the taxes and exactions have, for the last three years, weighed heavily on Saxony, but I cannot blame him for that. It was needful that he should have money to carry on the war, and as Saxony had brought it on herself, I could not blame him that he bore heavily upon her.

"Then, too, Thirza has, for the last two or three years, become a perfect enthusiast for the Prussians. Whether it was the king's gracious manner to herself, or from some other cause, I cannot say; but she has certainly become an ultra-Prussian.

"And now lunch must be ready, and you look as if you wanted it, Drummond; and I am sure Thirza does. She was too excited to eat supper, when we got here last night; and as for her breakfast, it was altogether untouched."

"No doubt you think, Drummond," Count Eulenfurst said, when he called the next morning, "that you have done your duty fairly to Prussia."

"How do you mean, count?" Fergus replied, somewhat puzzled by the question.

"I mean that you have served five campaigns, you have been twice made a prisoner, you were wounded at Zorndorf, you nearly died of fever last winter, now you have lost your arm at Torgau; so I think that you have fully done your duty to the king under whom you took service, and could now retire with a thoroughly clear conscience.

"My own idea is that the war has quite spent its strength. France is practically bankrupt. Austria and Russia must be as tired of the war as Prussia, and this last defeat of their hopes cannot but discourage the two empresses greatly. I hear, from my friends in Vienna, that in the capital and all the large cities they are becoming absolutely disgusted with the war; and though it may go on for a while, I believe that its fury is spent.

"At any rate, I think you have earned a right to think of yourself, as well as others. You certainly have nothing to gain by staying longer in the service."

"I was thinking the same, last night, count. Certainly one man, more or less, will make no difference to Frederick; but I thought that, unless you spoke of it, I should let matters go on as they are, except that I thought of asking for three months' leave to go home."

"That you should go home for a few months is an excellent plan, Drummond; but I think it would be better that, when you were there, you should be able to stay five or six months, if so inclined. Go to the king, tell him frankly that you feel that you want rest and quiet for a time, that you have no longer any occasion in the pecuniary way for remaining in the army, and that you want to get married--all good reasons for resigning a commission. You see, we have now some sort of right to have a voice in the matter. You had a narrow escape at Torgau, and next time you might not be so fortunate; and, anxious as we are for Thirza's happiness, we do think it is high time that you retired from the service."

"That decides it, count. I myself have had quite enough of this terrible work. Were I a Prussian, I should owe my first duty to the country, and as long as the war continued should feel myself bound to set aside all private considerations to defend her to the last; but it is not so, and my first duty now is assuredly to Thirza, to you, and to the countess. Therefore I will, this morning, go to the king and ask him to allow me to resign my commission."

"Do so, Drummond. I thought of saying