Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844

After a week of this most harassing warfare, in which we lost ten times the number of men which it would have cost to march over the bodies of Dumourier's army to the capital, the order was issued for a general retreat to the frontier. I remembered Mordecai's letter; but it was now too late. Even if I could have turned my horse's head to a French post, I felt myself bound to share the fortunes of the gallant army to which I had been so closely attached. In the heat of youth, I went even further, and, as my mission had virtually ceased, and I wore a Prussian order, I took the undiplomatic step of proposing to act as one of the duke's aides-de-camp until the army had left the enemy's territory. Behold me now, a hulan of the duke's guard! I found no reason to repent my choice, though our service was remarkably severe. The present war was chiefly against the light troops and irregulars of the retreating army—the columns being too formidable to admit of attack, at least by the multitude. Forty thousand men, of the main army of France, were appointed to the duty of "seeing us out of the country." But every attempt at foraging, every movement beyond the range of our cannon, was instantly met by a peasant skirmish. Every village approached by our squadrons, exhibited a barricade, from which we were fired on; every forest produced a succession of sharp encounters; and the passage of every river required as much precaution, and as often produced a serious contest, as if we were at open war. Thus we were perpetually on the wing, and our personal escapes were often of the most hair-breadth kind. If we passed through a thicket, we were sure to be met by a discharge of bullets; if we dismounted from our horses to take our hurried and scanty meal, we found some of them shot at the inn-door; if we flung ourselves, as tired as hounds after a chase, on the straw of a village stable, the probability was that we were awakened by finding the thatch in a blaze. How often we envied the easier life of the battalions! But there an enemy, more fearful than the peasantry, began to show itself. The weather had changed to storms of rain and bitter wind; the plains of Champagne, never famed for fertility, were now as wild and bare as a Russian steppe. The worst provisions, supplied on the narrowest scale—above all, disgust, the most fatal canker of the soldier's soul—spread disease among the ranks; and the roads on which we followed the march, gave terrible evidence of the havoc that every hour made among them. The mortality at last became so great, that it seemed not unlikely that the whole army would thus melt away before it reached the boundary of this land of death.

The horror of the scene even struck the peasantry, and whether through fear of the contagion, or through the uselessness of hunting down men who were treading to the grave by thousands, the peasantry ceased to follow us. Yet such was the wretchedness of that hideous progress, that this cessation of hostility was scarcely a relief. The animation of the skirmishes, though it often cost life, yet kept the rest more alive; the strategem, the adventure, the surprise, nay, even the failure and escape, relieved us from the dreadful monotony of the life, or rather the half-existence, to which we were now condemned. Our buoyant and brilliant career was at an end; we were now only the mutes and mourners of a funeral procession of seventy thousand men.

I still look back with an indescribable shudder at the scenes which we were compelled to witness from day to day during that month of misery; for the march, which began in the first days of October, was protracted till its end. I had kept up my spirits when many a more vigorous frame had sunk, and many a maturer mind had desponded; but the perpetual recurrence of the same dreary spectacles, the dying, and the more fortunate dead, covering the highways, the fields, and the village streets, at length sank into my soul. Some recollections of earlier principles, and the memory of my old friend Vincent, prevented my taking the summary and unhappy means of ridding myself of my burden, which I saw daily resorted to among the soldiery—a bullet through the brain, or a bayonet through the heart, cured all. But, thanks to early impressions, I was determined to wait the hand of the enemy, or the course of nature. Many a night I lay down beside my starving charger, with something of a hope that I should never see another morning; and many a morning, when I dragged my feeble limbs from the cold and wet ground, I looked round the horizon for the approach of some enemy's squadron, or peasant band, which might give me an honourable chance of escape from an existence now no longer endurable. But all was in vain. For leagues round no living object was visible, except that long column, silently and slowly winding on through the distance, like an army of spectres.

My diminished squadron had at length become almost the only rear-guard. From a hundred and fifty as fine fellows as ever sat a charger, we were now reduced to a third. All its officers, youths of the first families of Prussia, had either been left behind dying in the villages, or had been laid in the graves by the road-side, and I was now the only commandant. Perhaps even this circumstance was the means of saving my life. My new responsibility compelled me to make some exertion; and I felt that, live or die, I might still earn an honourable name. Even in those darkest hours, the thought that Clotilde might ask where and how I finished my ill-fortuned career, and perhaps give a moment's sorrow to one who remembered her to the last, had its share in restoring me to a sense of the world. In that sort of fond frenzy, which seems so fantastic when it is past, but so natural, and is actually so irresistible while it is in the mind, I wrote down my feelings, wild as they were—my impossible hopes, and a promise never to forget her while I remained in this world, and, if there could be an intercourse between the living and the dead, in that world to which I felt myself hastening. I then bade her a solemn and heartfelt farewell. Placing the paper in my bosom, with a locket containing a ringlet of her beautiful hair, which Marianne had contrived to obtain for me, the only legacy I had to offer, I felt as if I had done my last duty among mankind.

Still we wandered on, through a country which had the look of a boundless cemetery. Not a peasant was met; not a sound of human labour, joy or sorrow, reached the ear; not a smoke rose from mansion or cottage; all was still, except when the wind burst in bitter gusts over the plain, or the almost ceaseless rain swelled into sheets, and sent the rivers roaring down before us. If the land had never been inhabited, or had been swept of its inhabitants by an avenging Providence, it could not have been more solitary. I never conceived the idea of the wilderness before. It was the intensity of desolation.

We seemed even to make no progress. We began to think that the scene would never change. But one evening, when the troop had lain down under the shelter of a knoll, my sergeant, a fine Hungarian, whose eyes had been sharpened by hussar service on the Turkish border, aroused me, saying that he had discovered French horse-tracks in advance of us. We were all instantly on the alert, the horse-tracks were found to be numerous, and it was evident that a strong body of the enemy's cavalry had managed to get in between us and the army. It is true that there was a treaty, in which the unmolested movement of the duke was an article. But, it might have been annulled; or the French general might have been inclined to make a daring experiment on our worn-down battalions; or, at all events, it was our business to keep him as far off as we could. We were on horseback immediately. The track led us along the high-road for one or two leagues and then turned off towards a village on a height at some distance. We now paused, and the question was, whether to follow the enemy, or to dismount and try to rest ourselves, and our tired horses, for the night. We had scarcely come to the decision of unloosing girths, when the sky above the village showed a sudden glow; and a confused clamour of voices came upon the wind. Dispatching an orderly to the duke, to inform him of the French movement, we rode towards the village. We found the road in its immediate neighbourhood covered with fugitives; who, however, instead of flying from us with the usual horror of the peasantry, threw themselves beside our stirrups, hung on our bridles, and implored us with every wild gesticulation to hasten to the gates. All that I could learn from the outcries of men, women, and children, was, that their village, or rather town—for we found it of considerable size—had been the quarters of some of the Austrian cavalry, and that the officers had given a ball, to which the leading families had been invited. The ball was charged as a national crime by the democrats in Paris, and a regiment of horse had been sent to punish the unfortunate town.

To attack such a force with fifty worn-out men, was obviously hopeless, and my hulans, brave as they were, hung down their heads; but a fresh concourse came rushing from the gates with even louder outcries than before, and the words, massacre and conflagration, were heard with fearful emphasis. While I pondered for a moment on our want of means, a fine old man, with his white hair stained with blood from a sabre wound in his forehead, clung to my charger's neck, and implored me, by the honour of soldiership, to make but one effort against the revolutionary brigands, as he termed them. "I am a French officer and noble!" he exclaimed—"I have served my king, I have a son in the army of Condé, and now the wretches have seized on my only daughter, my Amalia, and they are carrying her to their accursed guillotine." I could resist no longer; yet I looked round despairingly at my force. "Follow me," said the agonized old man; "one half of the villains are drunk in the cafes already, the other half are busy in that horrid procession to the axe. I shall take you by a private way, and you may fall upon them by surprise. You shall find me, and all who belong to me, sword in hand by your side. Come on; and the God of battles, and protector of the unhappy, will give you victory." He knelt at my feet, with his hands upraised.—"For my child's sake!"—he continued faintly to exclaim—"for my innocent child's sake!" I saw tears fall down some of our bronzed faces, and I had but one word to utter; but that was—"Forward!" We followed our guide swiftly and silently through the narrow streets; and then suddenly emerging into the public square, saw such a sight of terror as never before met my eyes.

SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND

A great revolution has taken place in Scotland. A greater has been threatened. Nor is that danger even yet certainly gone by. Upon the accidents of such events as may arise for the next five years, whether fitted or not fitted to revive discussions in which many of the Non-seceders went in various degrees along with the Seceders, depends the final (and, in a strict sense, the very awful) question, What is to be the fate of the Scottish church? Lord Aberdeen's Act is well qualified to tranquillize the agitations of that body; and at an earlier stage, if not intercepted by Lord Melbourne, might have prevented them in part. But Lord Aberdeen has no power to stifle a conflagration once thoroughly kindled. That must depend in a great degree upon the favourable aspect of events yet in the rear.

Meantime these great disturbances are not understood in England; and chiefly on the differences between the two nations as to the language of their several churches and law courts. The process of ordination and induction is totally different under the different ecclesiastical administrations of the two kingdoms. And the church courts of Scotland do not exist in England. We write, therefore, with an express view to the better information of England proper. And, with this purpose, we shall lead the discussion through four capital questions:—

I. What is it that has been done by the moving party?

II. How was it done? By what agencies and influence?

III. What were the immediate results of these acts?

IV. What are the remote results yet to be apprehended?

I. First, then, WHAT is it that has been done?

Up to the month of May in 1834, the fathers and brothers of the "Kirk" were in harmony as great as humanity can hope to see. Since May 1834, the church has been a fierce crater of volcanic agencies, throwing out of her bosom one-third of her children; and these children are no sooner born into their earthly atmosphere, than they turn, with unnatural passions, to the destruction of their brethren. What can be the grounds upon which an acharnement so deadly has arisen?

It will read to the ears of a stranger almost as an experiment upon his credulity, if we tell the simple truth. Being incredible, however, it is not the less true; and, being monstrous it will yet be recorded in history, that the Scottish church has split into mortal feuds upon two points absolutely without interest to the nation: 1st, Upon a demand for creating clergymen by a new process; 2dly, Upon a demand for Papal latitude of jurisdiction. Even the order of succession in these things is not without meaning. Had the second demand stood first, it would have seemed possible that the two demands might have grown up independently, and so far conscientiously. But, according to the realities of the case, this is not possible, the second demand grew out of the first. The interest of the Seceders, as locked up in their earliest requisition, was that which prompted their second. Almost every body was contented with the existing mode of creating the pastoral relation. Search through Christendom, lengthways and breadthways, there was not a public usage, an institution, an economy, which more profoundly slept in the sunshine of divine favour or of civil prosperity, than the peculiar mode authorized and practised in Scotland of appointing to every parish its several pastor. Here and there an ultra-Presbyterian spirit might prompt a murmur against it. But the wise and intelligent approved; and those who had the appropriate—that is, the religious interest—confessed that it was practically successful. From whom, then, came the attempt to change? Why, from those only who had an alien interest, an indirect interest, an interest of ambition in its subversion. As matters stood in the spring of 1834, the patron of each benefice, acting under the severest restraints—restraints which (if the church courts did their duty) left no room or possibility for an unfit man to creep in, nominated the incumbent. In a spiritual sense, the church had all power: by refusing, first of all, to "license" unqualified persons; secondly, by refusing to "admit" out of these licensed persons such as might have become warped from the proper standard of pastoral fitness, the church had a negative voice, all-potential in the creation of clergymen; the church could exclude whom she pleased. But this contented her not. Simply to shut out was an ungracious office, though mighty for the interests of orthodoxy through the land. The children of this world, who became the agitators of the church, clamoured for something more. They desired for the church that she should become a lady patroness; that she should give as well as take away; that she should wield a sceptre, courted for its bounties, and not merely feared for its austerities. Yet how should this be accomplished? Openly to translate upon the church the present power of patrons—that were too revolutionary, that would have exposed its own object. For the present, therefore, let this device prevail—let the power nominally be transferred to congregations; let this be done upon the plea that each congregation understands best what mode of ministrations tends to its own edification. There lies the semblance of a Christian plea; the congregation, it is said, has become anxious for itself; the church has become anxious for the congregation. And then, if the translation should be effected, the church has already devised a means for appropriating the power which she has unsettled; for she limits this power to the communicants at the sacramental table. Now, in Scotland, though not in England, the character of communicant is notoriously created or suspended by the clergyman of each parish; so that, by the briefest of circuits, the church causes the power to revolve into her own hands.

That was the first change—a change full of Jacobinism; and for which to be published was to be denounced. It was necessary, therefore, to place this Jacobin change upon a basis privileged from attack. How should that be done? The object was to create a new clerical power; to shift the election of clergymen from the lay hands in which law and usage had lodged it; and, under a plausible mask of making the election popular, circuitously to make it ecclesiastical. Yet, if the existing patrons of church benefices should see themselves suddenly denuded of their rights, and within a year or two should see these rights settling determinately into the hands of the clergy, the fraud, the fraudulent purpose, and the fraudulent machinery, would have stood out in gross proportions too palpably revealed. In this dilemma the reverend agitators devised a second scheme. It was a scheme bearing triple harvests; for, at one and the same time, it furnished the motive which gave a constructive coherency and meaning to the original purpose, it threw a solemn shadow over the rank worldliness of that purpose, and it opened a diffusive tendency towards other purposes of the same nature, as yet undeveloped. The device was this: in Scotland, as in England, the total process by which a parish clergyman is created, subdivides itself into several successive acts. The initial act belongs to the patron of the benefice: he must "present"; that is, he notifies the fact of his having conferred the benefice upon A B, to a public body which officially takes cognizance of this act; and that body is, not the particular parish concerned, but the presbytery of the district in which the parish is seated. Thus far the steps, merely legal, of the proceedings, were too definite to be easily disturbed. These steps are sustained by Lord Aberdeen as realities, and even by the Non-intrusionists were tolerated as formalities.

But at this point commence other steps not so rigorously defined by law or usage, nor so absolutely within one uniform interpretation of their value. In practice they had long sunk into forms. But ancient forms easily lend themselves to a revivification by meanings and applications, new or old, under the galvanism of democratic forces. The disturbers of the church, passing by the act of "presentation" as an obstacle too formidable to be separately attacked on its own account, made their stand upon one of the two acts which lie next in succession. It is the regular routine, that the presbytery, having been warned of the patron's appointment, and having "received" (in technical language) the presentee—that is, having formally recognised him in that character—next appoint a day on which he is to preach before the congregation. This sermon, together with the prayers by which it is accompanied, constitute the probationary act according to some views; but, according to the general theory, simply the inaugural act by which the new pastor places himself officially before his future parishioners. Decorum, and the sense of proportion, seem to require that to every commencement of a very weighty relation, imposing new duties, there should be a corresponding and ceremonial entrance. The new pastor, until this public introduction, could not be legitimately assumed for known to the parishioners. And accordingly at this point it was—viz. subsequently to his authentic publication, as we may call it—that, in the case of any grievous scandal known to the parish as outstanding against him, arose the proper opportunity furnished by the church for lodging the accusation, and for investigating it before the church court. In default, however, of any grave objection to the presentee, he was next summoned by the presbytery to what really was a probationary act at their bar; viz. an examination of his theological sufficiency. But in this it could not be expected that he should fail, because he must previously have satisfied the requisitions of the church in his original examination for a license to preach. Once dismissed with credit from this bar, he was now beyond all further probation whatsoever; in technical phrase, he was entitled to "admission." Such were the steps, according to their orderly succession, by which a man consummated the pastoral tie with any particular parish. And all of these steps, subsequent to the "reception" and inaugural preaching, were now summarily characterised by the revolutionists as "spiritual;" for the sake of sequestering them into their own hands. As to the initiatory act of presentation, that might be secular, and to be dealt with by a secular law. But the rest were acts which belonged not to a kingdom of this world. "These," with a new-born scrupulosity never heard of until the revolution of 1834, clamoured for new casuistries; "these," said the agitators, "we cannot consent any longer to leave in their state of collapse as mere inert or ceremonial forms. They must be revivified. By all means, let the patron present as heretofore. But the acts of 'examination' and 'admission,' together with power of altogether refusing to enter upon either, under a protest against the candidate from a clear majority of the parishioners—these are acts falling within the spiritual jurisdiction of the church. And these powers we must, for the future, see exercised according to spiritual views."

Here, then, suddenly emerged a perfect ratification for their own previous revolutionary doctrine upon the creation of parish clergymen. This new scruple was, in relation to former scruples, a perfect linch-pin for locking their machinery into cohesion. For vainly would they have sought to defeat the patron's right of presenting, unless through this sudden pause and interdict imposed upon the latter acts in the process of induction, under the pretext that these were acts competent only to a spiritual jurisdiction. This plea, by its tendency, rounded and secured all that they had yet advanced in the way of claim. But, at the same tine, though indispensable negatively, positively it stretched so much further than any necessity or interest inherent in their present innovations, that not improbably they faltered and shrank back at first from the immeasurable field of consequences upon which it opened. Thy would willingly have accepted less. But, unfortunately, it sometimes happens, that, to gain as much as is needful in one direction, you must take a great deal more than you wish for in another. Any principle, which could carry them over the immediate difficulty, would, by mere necessity, carry them incalculably beyond it. For if every act bearing in any one direction a spiritual aspect, showing at any angle a relation to spiritual things, is therefore to be held spiritual in a sense excluding the interference of the civil power, there falls to the ground at once the whole fabric of civil authority in any independent form. Accordingly, we are satisfied that the claim to a spiritual jurisdiction, in collision with the claims of the state, would not probably have offered itself to the ambition of the agitators, otherwise than as a measure ancillary to their earlier pretension of appointing virtually all parish clergymen. The one claim was found to be the integration or sine quâ non complement of the other. In order to sustain the power of appointment in their own courts, it was necessary that they should defeat the patron's power; and, in order to defeat the patron's power, ranging itself (as sooner or later it would) under the law of the Land, it was necessary that they should decline that struggle, by attempting to take the question out of all secular jurisdictions whatever.

In this way grew up that twofold revolution which has been convulsing the Scottish church since 1834; first, the audacious attempt to disturb the settled mode of appointing the parish clergy, through a silent robbery perpetrated on the crown and great landed aristocracy, secondly, and in prosecution of that primary purpose, the far more frantic attempt to renew in a practical shape the old disputes so often agitating the forum of Christendom, as to the bounds of civil and spiritual power.