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CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES

BY ARCHIBALD FORBES, LL.D.




NOTE

My obligations for permission to incorporate some of the articles in
this volume are due to Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Mr. James
Knowles of the _Nineteenth Century_, Mr. Percy Bunting of the
_Contemporary Review_, and the Proprietor of _McClure's Magazine_.

LONDON, _June_ 1896.




CONTENTS


1. MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE

2. REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET

3. GERMAN WAR PRAYERS

4. MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE

5. A VERSION OF BALACLAVA

6. HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"

7. CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT

8. THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER

9. RAILWAY LIZZ

10. MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER

11. THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY

12. BISMARCK BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR

13. THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR

14. THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE

15. GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST

16. THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY

17. THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY

18. PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES

19. THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN




MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE


The interval between the declaration of the Franco-German war of
1870-71, and the "military promenade," at which the poor Prince
Imperial received his "baptism of fire," was a pleasant, lazy time at
Saarbruecken; to which pretty frontier town I had early betaken myself,
in the anticipation, which proved well founded, that the tide of war
would flow that way first. What a pity it is that all war cannot be
like this early phase of it, of which I speak! It was playing at
warfare, with just enough of the grim reality cropping up occasionally,
to give the zest which the reckless Frenchwoman declared was added to a
pleasure by its being also a sin. The officers of the
Hohenzollerns--our only infantry regiment in garrison--drank their beer
placidly under the lime-tree in the market-place, as their men smoked
drowsily, lying among the straw behind the stacked arms ready for use
at a moment's notice. The infantry patrol skirted the frontier line
every morning in the gray dawn, occasionally exchanging with little
result a few shots with the French outposts on the Spicheren or down in
the valley bounded by the Schoenecken wood. The Uhlans, their piebald
lance-pennants fluttering in the wind, cantered leisurely round the
crests of the little knolls which formed the vedette posts, despising
mightily the straggling chassepot bullets which were pitched at them
from time to time in a desultory way; but which, desultory as they
were, now and then brought lance-pennant and its bearer to the
ground--an occurrence invariably followed by a little spurt of lively
hostility.

I had my quarters at the Rheinischer Hof, a right comfortable hotel on
the St. Johann side of the Saar, where most of the Hohenzollern
officers frequented the _table d'hote_ and where quaint little Max, the
drollest imp of a waiter imaginable, and pretty Frauelein Sophie the
landlord's niece, did all that in them lay to contribute to the
pleasantness and comfort of the house. Not a few pleasant evenings did
I spend at the table of the long dining-room, with the close-cropped
red head of silent and genial Hauptmann von Krehl looming large over
the great ice-pail, with its _chevaux de frise_ of long-necked
Niersteiner bottles--the worthy Hauptmann supported by blithe
Lieutenant von Klipphausen, ever ready with the _Wacht am Rhein_;
quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, brimful of recollections of "six-and-sixty" and
as ready to amputate your leg as to crack a joke or clink a glass; gay
young Adjutant von Zuelow--he who one day brought in a prisoner from the
foreposts a red-legged Frenchman across the pommel of his saddle; and
many other good fellows, over most of whom the turf of the Spicheren,
or the brown earth of the Gravelotte plain, now lies lightly.

But although the Rheinischer Hof associates itself in my mind with many
memories, half-pleasant, half-sad, it was not the most accustomed haunt
of the casuals in Saarbruecken, including myself. Of the waifs and
strays which the war had drifted down to the pretty frontier town the
great rendezvous was the Hotel Hagen, at the bend of the turn leading
from the bridge up to the railway station. The Hagen was a
free-and-easy place compared with the Rheinischer, and among its
inmates there was no one who could sing a better song than manly
George--type of the Briton at whom foreigners stare--who, ignorant of a
word of their language, wholly unprovided with any authorisation save
the passport signed "Salisbury," and having not quite so much business
at the seat of war as he might have at the bottom of a coal-mine,
gravitates into danger with inevitable certainty, and stumbles through
all manner of difficulties and bothers by reason of a serene
good-humour that nothing can ruffle and a cool resolution before which
every obstacle fades away. Was there ever a more compositely poly