Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No.394, August, 1848

Convinced at last that the city is theirs without opposition, the French take up their quarters. Rasinski establishes himself with his friends in a spacious palace, full of corridors, staircases, and long suites of rooms, reminding us in some degree of one of Mrs Radcliffe's castles. Here some well-managed scenes occur. Voices and footsteps are heard, and Ludwig has a dream "that is not all a dream," in which Bianca appears to him, warning of danger, and bidding him fly. As token of her real presence, she leaves him a bracelet – the same by picking up which he first made her acquaintance – and a letter, a mysterious sort of missive, like that by which the gunpowder plot was discovered, in which she hints at danger underground. Rasinski, who has been disturbed by a dark figure passing through his room, at which he fires a pistol without effect, institutes a search through the palace. In the cellars they are met by a smell of sulphur, and presently the building shakes with the explosion of a mine. They hurry up to their apartments, and find them full of smoke. Just then the stillness of the night is broken by shouts of fire, and by sounds of drums and trumpets. Moscow is in flames.

And now begins, with the commencement of Mr Rellstab's third volume, the prodigious retreat from Moscow to Paris. It occupies six books out of the sixteen into which "1812" is divided; and however the interest of the other ten may occasionally be found drawn out and flagging, it must be admitted that these six are of intense and enthralling interest. From a rising ground near Moscow, Rasinski and his friends obtained a bird's-eye view of the retreating multitude, just as, encumbered with spoil, exasperated by unwonted reverse and disappointment, their blood, impoverished by previous privations, now inflamed to fever by brief but furious excesses in the palaces and wine-cellars of the Russian nobles, they started upon their weary march.

"In three broad streams the enormous mass of men and baggage poured across the fields, issuing forth in inexhaustible numbers from the ruins of Moscow, whilst the head of the column disappeared in the blue and misty distance. And besides this main body, the plain to the right and left was covered with scattered horsemen and pedestrians.

"'What is to become of it all?' said Rasinski, gazing down on the throng. 'How is an army to move with such baggage? Fortunately the first charge of Cossacks will rid us of at least half the encumbrance. What blind greediness has presided at the collection of the spoil! How many have laden themselves with useless burdens, under which they are destined to sink!'

"'I shall be much surprised,' said Jaromir, 'if the Emperor does not have the entire plunder burned so soon as we get into the open country.'

"'Not he,' replied Rasinski. 'He will not deprive the soldier, who has plodded wearily over two-thirds of Europe, of the recompense of oft-promised booty. But my word for it, before this day is over, the fellows will of themselves begin to throw their ballast overboard. See yonder, those two men, they look like officer's servants. Have they not gone and harnessed themselves to a hand-cart, and now draw their load wearily after them! Not six hours will their strength endure; but blinded by avarice, they forget the eight hundred leagues that lie between this and Paris. And yonder lines of heavy-laden carts, how long will their axles hold? And if one breaks, whence is it to be replaced? It is as much as the artillery can do to supply their deficiencies. The Emperor looks ill-pleased at all this encumbrance, but he leaves it to time to teach them the impossibility of their undertaking. There is a waggon down! do you see? one who will leave at half-a-league from Moscow all that he had probably reckoned upon conveying to Paris.'

"The cart which Rasinski saw upset was overloaded with plunder; an axle had broken, and it lay in the middle of the road, stopping the passage. There was an instant check in the whole column. From the rear came angry cries of 'Forward!' for all felt that the utmost exertion was necessary to make way through the throng and bustle. The very density of the crowd impeded movement, so that an accident diminishing the number of carts was a matter of self-gratulation to the others. As the broken vehicle could not immediately move on, and there was no room to turn it aside, the driver of one of the following carts called out to clear it away at any rate. 'Throw the lumber out of the road! every one for himself here! we cannot wait half the day for one man. Lend a hand, comrades; unharness the horses, and pitch the rubbish into the fields'. Instantly, twenty, thirty, fifty arms were extended to obey the suggestion. In vain the owner of the cart stormed and swore, and strove to defend his property. In two minutes he was surrounded on all sides; and not only was the cart pillaged of all it contained, but the horses were unharnessed, the wheels taken off, and the body of the vehicle broken up and thrown aside; so that the road was once more clear. The howling fury of the plundered man was drowned in the scornful laughter of the bystanders; no one troubled his head about the matter, or dreamed of affording assistance to the despoiled individual, who might consider himself fortunate that his horses were left him.

"'If this happens on the first day's march, at the gates of Moscow,' observed Rasinski, 'what is to be expected when an enemy threatens these heavy-laden masses? Yonder marauder has saved nothing but his pair of lean horses. The others may think themselves lucky if they save as much from the first feint-attack of half a hundred Cossacks! The fellow now howling and cursing is the luckiest of them all; for he is the first relieved from his useless drudgery. This very day he will have abundant opportunity to laugh and scoff in his turn, perhaps at his spoilers themselves. And before a week is over, he will bless his stars that he has been saved the profitless toil. The difference is merely that he loses to-day what others will lose to-morrow and the day after: of all these thousands not one will ultimately profit by his booty.'

"The prognostications of the experienced soldier were speedily verified. The track of the French army was marked first by abandoned spoils, then by the bodies of the spoilers. Napoleon's soldiers were little accustomed to retreats, and seemed to imagine that, now they had condescended to commence one, the enemy would show his surprise and respect by abstaining from molesting them. Such at least is the only plausible way of explaining the infatuation that loaded with the most cumbersome plunder the multitude of men who, on the 16th September 1812, turned their backs upon the blazing turrets of Moscow. Nothing was too clumsy or heavy to be carried off; but ultimately nothing was found portable enough to be carried through the fatigues and dangers of the winter march. Baggage and superfluous munition-carts were soon left behind, and the horses taken for the artillery; for which purpose, before reaching Smolensko, every second man in the cavalry was deprived of his charger. Although winter had not yet set in, there were frosts every night, and the slippery roads trebled the fatigues of the attenuated and ill-shod horses. After a short time, every means of transport, not monopolised by the guns, was required by the sick, wounded, and weary; and nobody thought of possessing more baggage than he could carry with him. And even the trophies selected in Moscow by Napoleon's order, to throw dust in the eyes of the Parisians, – splendid bronze ornaments from the palaces, outlandish cannon, (the spoils of Russia in her eastern wars,) and the cross of St Ivan, wrenched from the tower of the Kremlin, – were sunk in a lake by the roadside. Soon snow was the sole pillow, and horse-flesh the best nourishment, of the broken and dispirited army.

"At Smolensko, Ludwig and Bernard, when seeking in the storehouses of the depot a supply of shoes for the regiment, suddenly find themselves face to face with their old enemies, Beaucaire and the Baron de St Luces, who have them arrested as spies of Russia. Prevented from communicating with Rasinski, who is suddenly ordered off and compelled to march without them, they undergo a sort of mock examination in the gray of the morning, and are led out of the town to be shot. The place appointed for their execution is a snow-covered hillock, a few hundred yards from the walls, and close to the extremity of a thick pine wood. They are escorted by thirty men, and an escape appears impossible. Nevertheless Bernard, hopeful and energetic, despairs not of accomplishing it, and communicates his intentions to Ludwig.

"Seizing a favourable moment, Bernard suddenly knocked down the two foremost soldiers, sprang from amongst his guards, and shouting to Ludwig to follow, bounded like a roebuck towards the forest. He had cleared the way for Ludwig, who, prepared for the signal, availed himself of the opening, and sped across the snowy field. The soldiers stood astounded. 'Fire!' cried the officer; and a few obeyed the order, but already several were in full pursuit of the fugitives, preventing the others from firing, lest they should shoot their comrades. Seeing this, all threw down their muskets and joined in the chase. Ludwig sought to keep near Bernard, in order not to sever his fate from that of his trusty friend. But the number of their pursuers soon forced them to take different directions. The hunted and the hunters were alike impeded by the snow, which had been blown off the steep side of the hillock, but lay in thick masses on the table-land, and at every step the feet sank deep. Already Ludwig saw the dusky foliage of the pines close before him, already he deemed himself to have escaped his unjust doom, when suddenly he sunk up to the hips, and, by his next movement, up to the breast in the snow, which had drifted into a fissure in the earth. In vain he strained every muscle to extricate himself. In a few seconds his pursuers reached him, grappled him unmercifully, and pulled him out of the hole by his arms and hair.

"Ill treated by the soldiers, driven forward by blows from fists and musket butts, Ludwig was dragged, rather than he walked, to the place appointed for his death. Even the scornful gaze with which Beaucaire received him was insufficient to give him strength to enjoy in the last moments of his life an inward triumph over that contemptible wretch. But he looked anxiously around for Bernard, to see whether he again was the companion of his melancholy lot. He saw him not; he evidently was not yet captured. The hope that his friend had finally effected his escape, comforted Ludwig, although he felt that death, now he was alone to meet it, was harder to endure than when he was sustained by the companionship of the gallant Bernard.

"He was now again at the post, to which two soldiers secured him with musket-slings, his arms behind his back, as though they feared fresh resistance. The sergeant stepped up to him, a handkerchief in his hand.

"'I will bandage your eyes, comrade,' said he, compassionately; 'it is better so.'

"In the first instance Ludwig would have scorned the bandage, but now he let his kind-hearted fellow-soldier have his way. Suddenly it occurred to him that he might make the sergeant the bearer of his last earthly wishes.

"'Comrade,' said he, as the man secured the cloth over his eyes, 'you will not refuse me a last friendly service. So soon as you are able, go to Colonel Rasinski, who commands our regiment; tell him how I died, and beg him to console my sister. And if you outlive this war, and go to her in Warsaw or Dresden, and tell her that' —

"He was interrupted by several musket-shots close at hand.

"'Are those for me, already?' cried Ludwig, – for the sergeant had let go the handkerchief, now secured round his head, and had stepped aside. For sole reply Ludwig heard him exclaim – 'The devil! what is that?' and spring forward. At the same time arose a confused outcry and bustle, and again shots were fired just in the neighbourhood, one bullet whistling close to Ludwig's head. He heard horses in full gallop, whilst a mixture of words of command, shouts, clash of steel and reports of fire-arms resounded on all sides. 'Forward!' cried the voice of the sergeant. 'Close your ranks! fire!'

"A platoon fire from some twenty muskets rang in Ludwig's ear; he imagined the muzzles were pointed at him, and an involuntary tremor, made his whole frame quiver. But he was still alive and uninjured. The complete darkness in which he found himself, the bonds that prevented his moving, the excitement and tension of his nerves, caused a host of strange wild ideas to flit across his brain. Hearing upon the left the stamp of hoofs and shouts of charging horsemen, he thought for a moment that Rasinski and his men had come to deliver him. Then, however, he heard the howling war-cry of the Russians. A 'hurrah' rent the air. The contending masses rushed past him; the smoke of powder whirled in his face; cries, groans, and clatter of weapons were all around him. He was in the midst of the fight; in vain he strove to break his bonds, that he might tear the bandage from his eyes; he continued in profound obscurity. 'Is it a frightful dream?' he at last gasped out, turning his face to heaven. 'Will none awake me, and end this horrible suffering?'

"But no hand touched him, and little by little the tumult receded, and was lost in the distance.

"Thus passed a few minutes of agonising suspense; Ludwig writhed in his fetters; a secret voice whispered to him, that could he burst them he yet might be saved, but they resisted his utmost efforts. Then he again heard loud voices, which gradually approached accompanied by hurried footsteps. On a sudden a rough hand tore the cloth from his eyes.

"Thunderstruck, he gazed around. Three men with long beards, whom he at once recognised as Russian peasants, stood before him, staring at him with a mixture of scorn and wonder. On the ground lay several muskets and the bodies of two French soldiers. Ludwig saw himself in the power of his enemies, whom a strange chance had converted into his deliverers."

Beaucaire and St Luces were also in the hands of the Russians, in whose unfriendly care we for the present leave both them and Ludwig, to recur, at a future day, to this interesting romance.

THE BLUE DRAGOON;

A STORY OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE, FROM THE CRIMINAL RECORDS OF HOLLAND

16In the town of M – , in Holland, there lived, towards the close of the last century, an elderly widow, Madame Andrecht. She inhabited a house of her own, in company with her maid-servant, who was nearly of the same age. She was in prosperous circumstances; but, being in delicate health and paralysed on one side, she had few visitors, and seldom went abroad except to church or to visit the poor. Her chief recreation consisted in paying a visit in spring to her son, who was settled as a surgeon in a village a few miles off. On these occasions, fearing a return of a paralytic attack, she was invariably accompanied by her maid, and, during these visits, her own house was left locked up, but uninhabited and unwatched.

On the 30th June 17 – , the widow returning to M – from one of these little excursions, found her house had been broken open in her absence, and that several valuable articles, with all her jewels and trinkets, had disappeared. Information was immediately given to the authorities, and a strict investigation of the circumstances took place without delay.

The old lady had been three weeks absent, and the thieves of course had had ample leisure for their attempt. They had evidently gained access through a window in the back part of the house communicating with the garden, one of the panes of which had been removed and the bolts of the window forced back, so as to admit of its being pulled up. The bolts of the back-door leading into the garden had also been withdrawn, as if the robbers had withdrawn their plunder in that direction. The other doors and windows were uninjured; and several of the rooms appeared to have been unopened. The furniture, generally, was untouched; but the kitchen utensils were left in confusion, as if the robbers had intended removing them, but had been interrupted or pursued.

At the same time it was evident they had gone very deliberately about their work. The ceiling and doors of a heavy old press, the drawers of which had been secured by strong and well constructed locks, had been removed with so much neatness that no part of the wood-work had been injured. The ceiling and doors were left standing by the side of the press. The contents, consisting of jewels, articles of value, and fine linens, were gone. Two strong boxes were found broken open, from which gold and silver coin, with some articles of clothing, had been abstracted. The value of the missing articles amounted to about two thousand Dutch guldens. The house, however, contained many other articles of value, which, singularly enough, had escaped the notice of the thieves. In particular, the greater part of the widow's property consisted of property in the funds, the obligations for which were deposited, not in the press above-mentioned, but in an iron chest in her sleeping-room. This chest she had accidentally removed, shortly before her departure; placing it in a more retired apartment, where it had fortunately attracted no attention.

The robbery had, apparently, been committed by more than one person; and, it was naturally suspected, by persons well acquainted with the house, and with the circumstances of its inhabitants. The house itself, which was almost the only respectable one in the neighbourhood, was situated in a retired street. The neighbouring dwellings were inhabited by the poorer classes, and not a few of the less reputable members of society. The inner fosse of the town, which was navigable, flowed along the end of the garden through which the thieves had, apparently, gained admittance, being separated from the garden only by a thin thorn hedge. It was conjectured that the thieves had made their way close to the hedge by means of a boat, and from thence had clambered over into the garden, along the walks and flower-beds of which foot-marks were traceable.

The discovery of the robbery had created a general sensation, and the house was surrounded by a crowd of curious idlers, whom it required some effort on the part of the police to prevent from intruding into the premises. One of them only, a baker, and the inhabitant of the house opposite to that of the widow, succeeded in making his way in along with the officers of justice. His acquaintances awaited his return with impatience, trusting to be able, from his revelations, to gratify their curiosity at second-hand. If so, they were disappointed, for, on his exit, he assumed an air of mystery, answered equivocally, and observed, that people might suspect many things of which it might not be safe to speak.

In proportion, however, to his taciturnity was the loquaciousness of a woolspinner, Leendert Van N – , the inhabitant of the corner house next to that of the widow. He mingled with the groups who were discussing the subject; dropped hints that he had his own notions as to the culprits, and could, if necessary, give a clue to their discovery. Among the crowd who were observed to listen to these effusions, was a Jew dealer in porcelain, a suspected spy of the police. Before evening, the woolspinner received a summons to the town-house, and was called upon by the burgomaster for an explanation of the suspicious expressions he had used. He stammered, hesitated, pretended he knew of nothing but general grounds of suspicion, like his neighbours; but being threatened with stronger measures of compulsion, he at last agreed to speak out, protesting, at the same time, that he could willingly have spared persons against whom he had no grudge whatever, and would have been silent for ever, if he had foreseen the consequence of his indiscretion.

The substance of his disclosure was to this effect: – Opposite the German post-house, at the head of the street in which the woolspinner lived, there was a little alehouse. Nicholas D – was the landlord. He was generally known among his acquaintances, not by his baptismal or family name, but by the appellation of the Blue Dragoon, from having formerly served in the horse regiment of Colonel Van Wackerbarth, which was popularly known by the name of the Blues. About two years before, he had become acquainted with and married Hannah, the former servant of Madame Andrecht, who had been six years in that situation, and possessed her entire confidence. Unwilling to part with her attendant, and probably entertaining no favourable notion of the intended husband, Madame Andrecht had long thrown impediments in the way of the match, so that the parties were obliged to meet chiefly at night, and by stealth. Nicholas found his way into the house at night through the garden of his acquaintance the woolspinner, and across the hedge which divided it from Madame Andrecht's. Of these nocturnal visits the woolspinner was at first cognisant, but, fearful of getting into a scrape with his respectable neighbour, he was under the necessity of intimating to the bold dragoon, that if he intended to continue his escalades, he must do so from some other quarter than his garden. Nicholas obeyed apparently, and desisted; but, to the surprise of the woolspinner, he found the lovers continued to meet not the less regularly in Madame Andrecht's garden. One evening, however, the mystery was explained. The woolspinner, returning home after dark, saw tied to a post in the canal, close by Madame Andrecht's garden, one of those small boats which were generally used by the dragoons for bringing forage from the magazine; and he at once conjectured that this was the means by which the dragoon was enabled to continue his nocturnal assignations. With the recollection of this passage in the landlord's history was combined a circumstance of recent occurrence, trifling in itself, but which appeared curiously to link in with the mode in which the robbery appeared to have been effected. Ten days before the discovery of the housebreaking, and while the widow was in the country, the woolspinner stated that he found, one morning, a dirty-coloured handkerchief lying on the grass bank of the fosse, and exactly opposite his neighbour's garden. He took it up and put it in his pocket, without thinking about it at the time. At dinner he happened to remember it, mentioned the circumstance to his wife, showed her the handkerchief, and observed jestingly, "If Madame Andrecht were in town, and Hannah were still in her service, we should say our old friend the Blue Dragoon had been making his rounds and had dropt his handkerchief." His wife took the handkerchief, examined it, and exclaimed, "In the name of wonder, what is that you say? Is not Hannah's husband's name Nicholas D – ?" pointing out to him at the same time the initials N. D. in the corner. Both, however, had forgotten the circumstance till the occurrence of the robbery naturally recalled it to the husband's mind.

The woolspinner told his story simply; his conclusions appeared unstrained: suspicion became strongly directed against the Blue Dragoon, and these suspicions were corroborated by another circumstance which emerged at the same time.

During the first search of the house, a half-burnt paper, which seemed to have been used for lighting a pipe, was found on the floor, near the press which had been broken open. Neither Madame Andrecht nor her maid smoked; the police officers had no pipes when they entered the house; so the match had in all probability been dropped on the ground by the housebreakers.

On examination of the remains of the paper, it appeared to have been a receipt, such as was usually granted by the excise to innkeepers for payment of the duties on spirits received into the town from a distance, and which served as a permit entitling the holder to put the article into his cellars. The upper part of the receipt containing the name of the party to whom it was granted was burnt, but the lower part was preserved, containing the signature of the excise officer, and the date of the permit: it was the 16th March of the same year. From these materials it was easy to ascertain what innkeeper in the town had, on that day, received such a permit for spirits. From an examination of the excise register, it appeared that on that day Nicholas D – had received and paid the duties on several ankers of Geneva. Taken by itself, this would have afforded but slender evidence that he had been the person who had used the paper for a match, and had dropped it within Madame Andrecht's room; but, taken in connexion with the finding of the handkerchief, and the suspicious history of his nocturnal rambles which preceded it, it strengthened in a high degree the suspicions against the ex-dragoon.