The Turks and Tartars were wont to make use of horses' tails for their ensigns, and the number of these denoted the rank of their commanders—the Sultan having seven, and the grand vizier only three, &c.
The alleged origin of the holy banner of Persia is curious. It is said that during a battle which lasted three days between Saade and Rustam, the usurper—the same who assassinated the reforming Sophi in 1499—the standard of the monarchy was captured, a circumstance that caused excess of grief on one side and of joy on the other—one party feeling that theirprestigehad departed, and the other—that of the usurper—deeming it a sure presage of future victory. This war-like relic was simply the leathern apron of a blacksmith, who in some remote time had been the William Wallace of Persia, for the mastery of which the Saracens so long contended with the Turks; but the badge of heroic poverty was disguised, and almost concealed, by the profusion of gems which covered it.
Undoubtedly, the banner which had the most distinct and glorious history was the Oriflamme of France, first adopted in person by Louis VI. in 1110, and which continued to be borne by the French sovereigns, in addition to the Royal Standard, down to the time of Charles VII., and the accounts of which have been entirely overlooked by British historians and antiquaries. Before the time of Louis VI., the Comtes de Vexin were bound by the charter of their lands, which they held of the Abbey of St. Denis, to protect the domains of the latter, and accordingly, on the approach of any danger or invasion, they assembled their vassals and appeared before the Abbey, where they received its banner, or gonfanon, which was borne before them in battle in defence of the lands of the church. At a later period the county of Vexin having been annexed to the crown, the kings of France followed the pious example of the ancient counts, to whom they had succeeded, and thus, in time, the oriflamme, as a royal standard of France, supplanted that which had been hitherto borne, the alleged cloak of St. Martin, of Tours—or rather the half thereof, as, according to the Bollandists, he gave the other portion to a shivering beggar at the gate of Amiens.
He to whom the care of the banner was confided at the head of the army, had the title ofPorte-Oriflamme, and had the command of its chosen guard, noble chevaliers and men-at-arms. He was ever a man of prudence and approved valour, and his post led to higher honours. We find in history, under Charles V. of France, a gentleman styled Marshal of France, who was its bearer. It was an office for life, and for death too, as his oath obliged him to perish, rather than abandon theOriflamme.
Louis IX. lost it on his expedition to Egypt, as it fell, for a time, into the hands of the infidels; and "the Oriflamme has not been in use in our armies," says theDictionnaire Militaire, 1758, "since the English were absolute masters of Paris, after the death of Charles VI."
The Oriflamme was of flame-coloured silk—hence its name—uncharged, and divided at the lower extremity into three portions ending in green tassels. It was hung from a cross-yard, with two cords of silk and gold to keep it from swinging in the wind, on the march, or when in battle.
The firstnamedin history as its bearer is Anscieu Seigneur de Chevreuse, in 1294, under Philip le Bel. He had predecessors in the time of Louis le Gros; but René Moreau is the last who, in 1450, was commissioned with the real dignity ofPorte-Oriflamme. Though usually, till the first Revolution, lodged at St. Denis, it was occasionally left for a time in the custody of its bearers; hence the families of D'Harcourt and Beavron long affirmed that they were in possession of the real Oriflamme, as successors of Pierre de Villiers de Lisle Adam, who had been its bearer, and whose daughter married the brave Jean Garencière.
Louis VII. took it with him in his voyage to the Bosphorus and his march through Hungary and Thrace. Philip Augustus had it displayed in 1183, in the war against Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders; Galois, Seigneur de Montigne, bore it at the battle of Bouvines, and Louis VIII. unfurled it in the war against the Albigeois in 1226.
Louis IX. had it with him in the war against Henry III. of England in 1262, and, as stated, in his crusade against the infidels in Egypt; De Chevreuse bore it under Philip in 1304; and the bearers were successively, Raoul, surnamedHerpin, Seigneur d'Erquery in 1315; Miles de Noyers de Vilbertin in 1328; Geoffry Lord of Charny in 1355; Arnoul d'Andrehon in 1388; the Seigneur de L'Isle Adam in 1372; Sire de la Trimoille and Guillaume de Bordes in 1383; Pierre d'Aumont, surnamedHutin, in 1397; and Guillaume Martel de Bocqueville in 1414.
Louis XI. received the banner from the hands of Cardinal d'Alby in 1465, in the ancient church of St. Catharinedu Val des Écoliersat Paris, prior to the war against the Burgundians, and after that, we hear no more of the famous Oriflamme, which must have perished at the sack of St. Denis in 1793; but a modern red-flag supplies its place behind the altar there, at the present day.
The so-called Raven-banner of Hubba the Dane, which was captured near Northam in Devonshire, when he was slain in battle by the Saxons, in 869, and where his tomb is still shown, was simply a stuffed black bird, probably of the raven species, which remained quiet when defeat was at hand, but clapped its wings vigorously before a victory.
The royal ensign of the West Saxons was a golden dragon; and thus we hear often of the Dragon of Wessex in the fierce old fights during the time of the Heptarchy.
It was not until after the Synod of Oxford, in 1220, that the Red Cross of St. George supplanted the martlets of St. Edward, up to that date the patron of England. The Scottish Cross of St. Andrew has a fabulous history exactly similar to that of theLabaramof Constantine, and dating back to the ninth century; but in neither England nor Scotland has a banner of any antiquity been preserved, unless we may enumerate as such the banner given to the citizens of Edinburgh by Margaret of Oldenburg, Queen of James III., in 1482, and still preserved there, under the local name of the Blue Blanket, or Banner of the Holy Ghost, on the displaying of which, not only the craftsmen of Edinburgh, but those of all Scotland, were bound to appear in arms, under the Convener of the Trades. The fragment of it that remains, shows that its colour was blue, crossed by the white saltire of St. Andrew.
History shows us that in past ages there has ever and anon been in most countries a fancy for forging or casting ponderous cannon, even as there has been often in a spirit of rivalry, a fancy for building great ships; and the result has very generally been that, in both instances, there has been a mistake; for the great ships have been almost invariably cast away, and the great guns have proved useless, even for battery purpose; and it is not improbable that such may be the result eventually with our "Woolwich Infants" and our eighty-one ton guns.
Though cannon are mentioned as having been used in a sea fight between a Moorish King of Seville and a King of Tunis in the 13th century, they first marked the inauguration of a new era in war when Edward III. of England brought with him to the field of Cressi in 1346, five small pieces, made by whom is quite unknown; but there can be little doubt that they were constructed in the mode of all early cannon, of iron bars fitted together, hooped with rings and charged with stone shot—not iron balls.
Prior to Cressi, however, cannon had undoubtedly been used in sieges. In 1338 there was one used at Cambrai from which cross-bows were discharged, and several small guns of the same kind were used in the following year at the investment of Quesnoy; again at the siege of the then Moorish town of Algesiras, near Gibraltar, in 1342; and old annals tell us of the overwhelming terror their explosion excited among the enemy.
Iron balls were first cast in the reign of Louis XI. in 1461; but stone were in common use for a hundred years later.
As time went on, cannon, though primitively formed as described, increased in size that prodigious balls might be expelled from them against walled places, in imitation of the ancient machine which they had superseded; thus they soon became of enormous bore, until they attained the dignity of bombardes, like Mons Meg in Edinburgh Castle; but the difficulty of managing these pieces, and the growing knowledge that iron shot of much less weight could be impelled further by the use of better powder, gradually introduced the cast metal cannon used at the present day.
The five little cannon used at Cressi, to the wonder of the French who hadnone, were doubtless the same that Edward used at the siege of Calais in the following year.
In 1366 the Venetians, when besieging a town now named Chioggia in Lombardy, had with them two small pieces of artillery having leaden balls, worked by Germans, according to Le Blond's "Elements of War," dedicated to Louis of Lorraine; and battering guns were used by the Turks against the Christians at Constantinople in 1394; but the great bombardes were at their zenith when, in 1451, Mahomet II. began his march against the same city, with fourteen gigantic guns, which threw stone shot seventy-eight inches in circumference, weighing 800 lbs. In the siege, traces of which remain to this day, the Christians are supposed to have been without cannon, as they omitted to demolish the great bridge of boats which was constructed by the Turks and conduced so much to the reduction of the city.
For more than four centuries the guns of Mahomet II. protected the Dardanelles—the gate of the Eastern Empire; and, as an old traveller relates, that as they were shotted when fired on holidays, land was usually to be had very cheap on the opposite side of the straits.
Though practically these great pieces of artillery have given place to Krupp and other guns, they still remain on their old sites; but cannon of this description can only be discharged with effect when the object passes their line of fire, as they are not mounted on carriages but built into a wall. Some of those at the Dardanelles carry balls 26½ inches in diameter, and lie flat on a paved terrace near the level of the water, where they opened on our fleet in 1808, when Admiral Sir John Duckworth forced the passage of the Straits.
By a granite shot from one of these, when the fleet returned,H.M.S. Royal Georgehad her whole cutwater carried away; by another, the mainmast of the Windsor Castle was cut in two like a fishing-rod; another carried away the wheel of theRepulse, at the same moment killing and wounding twenty-four men, and rendering the ship so unmanageable, that but for the noble seamanship of her crew, she must have gone on shore.
A granite ball burst through the bows of theActive, and rolling aft destroyed all in its career, till it was brought up abreast of the main hatchway; a second tore away the whole barricade of her forecastle and fell into the sea to starboard; a third lodged in the bends abreast of the main-chains, and then tumbled overboard. ("Duckworth's Dispatches," &c.)
Baron de Tott tells us that he had seen one of these guns, which had been cast in the reign of Amurath, fired. Its ball weighed eleven hundredweight, and required a charge of powder amounting to 330 pounds. At the distance of 800 fathoms he saw this enormous globe divide into three pieces, which crossed the strait and rebounded from the rocks opposite.
One of these guns was sent to Woolwich, in exchange for an Armstrong breech-loader, and bears the inscription—
"Help o Allah! Mahomet Khan, the son of Murad!"
Louis XII. of France had a bombarde cast which is said to have thrown a ball of 500 lbs. from the Bastile to Charenton; but the guns of these times were destitute of trunnions, dolphin-rings, or breech-buttons.
Another enormous cannon of Mahomet II. is still to be seen, at Negroponte, used at its capture by him from the Venetians in 1470. It defends the south side of Kastro, and is the most remarkable monument there.
There is now preserved in the Castle of San Juliao da Barra, ten miles from Lisbon, a gun that was captured at the siege of Diu, on the southern coast of Gujirat, in 1546, by a gallant Portugese cavalier, Dom John de Castro, which is destitute of the appliances named, and is of some remarkable metal. It bears upon it a Hindoo inscription, to the effect that it was cast in 1400. It is 20 feet 7 inches long; its external diameter at the centre is 6 feet 3 inches, and it discharges a ball one hundredweight.
In ancient times there was a fondness for bestowing upon these great guns some peculiar and dignified name. Twelve brass cannon cast in 1503 for Louis XII., being all of remarkable size, he named after the greatest peers of France. The Spaniards and Portuguese named them after certain saints; thus, when the Emperor Charles V. departed to attack Tunis, his bombardes were named after the Twelve Apostles.
In the Malaga there is still an 80-pounder of great antiquity named the "Terrible." Two very curious 60-pounders in the arsenal at Bremen are each named "The Messenger of Bad News;" an 80-pounder at Berlin, now in the Royal Arsenal, is named "The Thunderer;" at Milan there is a 70-pounder called the "Pimontelle" (or the little spicer); and another at Bois le Duc is styledLe Diable. A third in the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome, made of the nails which fastened the copper-plates composing the roof of the ancient Pantheon, bears upon it this inscription—
"Ex clavis trabalibus porticus Agrippæ."
Many of the cannon of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were remarkable for their beautiful and ornate character. A decorated Spanish cannon now preserved in the Paris Museum, is a fine example of these florid pieces, which were always cast of brass or mixed metal.
Diego Ufano, in his treatise on Artillery, published in 1614, shows us the metallic mixtures of copper, tin, and brass, and the proportions of these, then used for cast pieces of cannon.
The Russian arsenals are very rich in great and ancient cannon and others of historical interest.
In front of the first arsenal at the Kremlin, are ranged a wonderful memorial of Napoleon's terrible retreat from Moscow, in the shape of no less than 875 pieces of captured ordnance; of these 365 are French, 189 are Austrian, 123 are Prussian, and the remainder bear the royal insignia of Italy, Naples, Bavaria, Saxony, Westphalia, Hanover, Spain, Würtemberg, Holland, and Poland. Many of these (says Sutherland Edwards) are inscribed with pretentious names that contrast strongly with their present humble position, such as the "Invincible," the "Conqueror," the "Eagle," and so forth. In front of the second arsenal is a wonderful collection of colossal cannon, ranged in a long line, with the shortest in the centre; thus their muzzles present a complete arc. The largest of these is a 4800-pounder, weighing, however, only forty tons! It has never been fired, and is only remarkable as a piece of casting.
An inscription on it tells that it was cast by the Russian master-founder named Chokoff, in 1586, by order of the Czar Feodor, who in that year conquered Siberia (the way to which was discovered by the Cossack warrior Jermack), and of whom a clever representation, on horseback, with crown and sceptre, appears close to the muzzle. Beside it are six other large pieces, the smallest of which weighs nearly four tons.—("The Russians at Home.")
About the end of the fifteenth century the following guns were in universal use:—
The Cannon-Royal . . . . . 48 pounder." Bastard-Cannon . . . . 36 "" Half-Carthoun . . . . 24 "" Culverin . . . . . . . 18 "" Demi-Culverin . . . . 9 "" Falcon . . . . . . . . 6 "" Saker . . . . . . 6, 5, 8 "" Basilisk (also). . . . 48 "" Serpentine . . . . . . 4 "" Aspik . . . . . . . . 2 "" Dragon . . . . . . . . 6 "" Syren . . . . . . . . 60 "" Falconet . . . . . 3, 2, 1 "" Moyenne . . . . . . . 12 ounces
By the middle of the seventeenth century, the largest cannon generally used in the field were 24-pounders, or others like the culverins of Nancy (18-pounders), so called from being first cast in that city; while the smallest were 6 and 3-pounders.
Mortars were first used to expel red-hot balls and large stones, long ere shells were known. They are believed to have been of German origin, and were used at the siege of Naples by Charles VIII. in 1435; but shells were first thrown out of them at the siege of Wachtendonk in Gueldres, by the Count of Mansfield. Shells were first invented by a citizen of Venloo, who, at a festival in honour of the Duke of Cleves, contrived, unfortunately, by the explosion of them, to reduce nearly the whole city to ashes. Maltus, an English engineer, first taught the French how to use them at the siege of La Motte in 1634. (Le Blond.)
The howitzer differs from the mortar, being mounted on a field carriage, like a gun; the chief difference being that the trunnions of the first are at the end, and of the other in the middle. The invention of the howitzer is subsequent to that of the mortar, as from the latter it originated.
The first man who invented the spiking of artillery was Gaspar Vimercalus of Bremen, who thus nailed up the artillery of Sigismund Malatesta.
Rifled cannon are by no means a modern invention, and can be traced far back into antiquity, as thearquebuse-rayéeof the French.
No kind of gun has been more universally known and used all over Europe and America than the carronade, or "smasher," as it was called. Cast at the Carron Works in Scotland (hence their name), they were the invention of General Robert Melville, an officer who served under Lord Rollo of Duncrub, at the capture of Dominica in the West Indies. Peculiarly constructed, and having a chamber for powder like a mortar, they were shorter and lighter than ordinary cannon.
Cast in mighty numbers for more than seventy years at Carron, they were employed by the fighting and mercantile marine of all Europe and America, till the time of the Crimean War. The first of them was presented by the Carron Company to the family of General Melville, with an inscription on the carriage, which records that the guns were cast "for solid, ship, shell or carcase shot, and were first used against the French fleet in 1799."
Mr. Smiles, in his "Industrial Biography," tells us that when cannon came to be employed in war, the vicinity of Sussex to the Cinque Ports gave it an advantage over the iron districts of the north and west of England, and for a long time the iron works of that county had a monopoly in the manufacture of guns. The stone balls were hewn from quarries at Maidstone Heath. An old mortar, which lay on Bridge Green, near Frant, is said to have been thefirstused in England. The chamber was cast, but the tube consisted of hooped bars.
In the Tower are some old hooped guns of the date of Henry VI. The first cast-iron cannon of English make were made at Buxtead in Sussex, in 1543, by Ralph Hogge, master founder, whose principal assistant was Pierre Baude, a Frenchman. About the same time, Hogge employed Peter Van Collet, a Flemish gunsmith, who, according to Stowe, "caused to be made certain mortar pieces, being at the mouth from eleven to nine inches wide, for the use whereof the said Peter caused to be made certain hollow shot of cast iron, stuffed with fyrwork, whereof the bigger sort has screws of iron to receive a match to carry fire, to break in small pieces the saidhollow shot, whereof the smallest piece hitting a man would kill or spoil him."
This is undoubtedly the parent of the explosive shell which has been brought to such terrible perfection in the present day. Many of Baude's brass and iron guns are still preserved in the Tower; and perhaps from his foundry came that very beautiful gun which bears the name of Henry VIII., 1541, and is preserved now at Southampton.
Two old English guns are at present in the ducal castle of Blair, whither they had been brought by the Athole family when Lords of the Isle of Man.
One is inscribed thus:—
"Henricus Octavus; Thomas Scymoure Knighte, Receyvour of the Peel, was Master of the King's Ordynans, when John and Robert Owyn made this pese. Anno dni., 1544."
The other has the legend:—
"Henry, Earle of Derbye, Lord of this Isle of Man, being here in May, 1577; namedDorothe. Henry Halsall, Receyvour of the Peele, bought this pese, 1574."
This was the fourth Earl of Derby, a K.G., and he had named the gun from his mother Dorothy, who was daughter of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.
The old brass gun, popularly known as Queen Anne's Pocket Pistol, was once called Queen Elizabeth's, according to Colonel James. It was cast at Utrecht in 1544, and is a 12-pounder, twenty feet long, finely ornamented with figures in bas-relief.
Scotland, which is rich in military and historical antiquities of all kinds, can also boast of several ancient cannon, extant or in her annals.
In 1430, James I. had cast for him in Flanders a cannon of brass, called the Lion of Scotland, bearing this inscription:—
"Illustri Jacobo Scottorum principe digno,Regni magnified, dum fulmine castra reducoFactus sum sub eo, nuncupar ego Leo."
"This," says Balfour in hisAnnales, "was the first canon or bombard of any strength or bignes, that ever was in Scotland." Among several ancient guns in the armory of the Grants of Grant in Strathspey, is one of singular beauty, covered with figures of men on horseback, and animals of the chase. It is four feet two inches long, and seems to have been a Moyenne or wall piece, and is inscribed:—
"Dominus . Johannes . Grant . Miles . Vicecomes de Invernes . Me fecit . in Germania, 1434."
The most ancient gun made in Britain is undoubtedly that bombarde known as Mons Meg in Edinburgh Castle. An inscription on thenewstock, cast at Woolwich in 1835, states that the gun "isbelievedto have been forged atMons, in 1486." But this is proved now to have been a gross mistake, an assertion which is utterly without warrant, as an elaborate "History of Galloway" shows from proofs indisputable that it was made by a smith of that county, in 1455, for the service of James II. (then besieging the Castle of Threave), at a place still named Knockcannon. It weighs six tons and a half, is composed of malleable iron bars hooped together, and its balls, which are all of Galloway granite, are twenty-one inches in diameter.
Two of these shots fired from it compelled the castle to surrender in the summer of 1455, andbothwere found in 1841 amid the ruins—one in the wall, the other in the draw-well; and both lay in adirect linefrom Knockcannon to the breach in the huge donjon tower. For his work, M'Kim received the forfeited lands of Mollance, pronounced in Scottish parlance,Mowance, and hence the tradition of "Meg" being forged atMons. In 1497, it accompanied the Scottish army into England in the cause of Perkin Warbeck; to the siege of Dumbarton in 1489, and many other scenes of strife. In 1681, the gun burst, when firing a royal salute for James Duke of Albany, as two of the fractured hoops still show. On these occasions, like the old bombardes of the Dardanelles, it was generallyshotted, as the Royal Treasurer's Accounts contain many entries of payments, for "finding and carryingherbullet from Wardie Mure to the Castell."
In 1509—thirty-four years before Ralph Hogge began to cast guns in Sussex—James IV. employed Robert Borthwick, his master gunner, tocasta set of brass ordnance for Edinburgh Castle. Seven of these were named by the king thesistersof Borthwick—being all alike in size and beauty. They were inscribed—-
"Machina sum, Stoto Borthweick Fabricata Roberto."
With ten other brass field-pieces, these guns were all taken by the English at the battle of Flodden, where Borthwick was killed, and the Earl of Surrey, who saw them, asserted that there were none finer in the arsenals of King Henry. Several of these guns were retaken by the Scots from the Earl of Hereford's army in 1544, and were long preserved in the Castle of Edinburgh, on the walls of which, in the siege of 1573, were a number of guns that bore the crowned salamander, the badge of Francis I., and had perhaps been brought from France by the Regent Duke of Chatelherault.
An old cannon namedDundee, which had been used in war by the Viscount of that name, was long preserved in the Castle of Kilchurn; but has now disappeared.
In the heart of British India there was, singular to say, found an antique Scottish cannon, which is now shown in Edinburgh, and the story of which is remarkable. At the siege of Bhurtpore in 1826, among the guns on the ramparts was one of great calibre and destructive power, popularly known among our soldiers by the absurd name of "Sweet-lips," which was taken at the point of the bayonet by H.M. 14th Foot.
Beside it was found a Scottish brass cannon, an 18-pounder, inscribed:—
"Jacobus Menteith me fecit, Edinburgh, Anno Dom.,1642."
It at once attracted the attention of Captain (afterwards Colonel) Lewis Carmichael, an old Peninsular officer, then aide-de-camp to Sir Jasper Nicolls. On the day before the storm, with six grenadiers of the 59th and four Ghoorkas, he had made a gallant dash into one of the breaches, to reconnoitre it for the desperate work that was to come, and he asked for the old Scottish cannon as a reward. It was at once given, by order of the Governor-General, and he brought it with him to Edinburgh, where it is preserved in the Museum of Antiquities, with several other ancient guns, some of which belonged to Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, Admiral of James III., and captain ofthe Yellow Frigate; but how it came to be so far up country in India, among the Jauts, it is difficult to conjecture, unless it had belonged to one of the ships of the old and ill-fated Scottish East India Company, which was ruined by the enmity and treachery of William of Orange.
British India has produced many pieces of ordnance, great in calibre and remarkable in history; among them may be enumerated the great gun of Hyder and Tippo, and the enormous cannon found at Agra, when that place was captured by Lord Lake in 1803. It had trunnions, and was furnished with four rings, two at the breech and two at the muzzle. It was of brass, says Thorne, "and for magnitude and beauty stands unrivalled. Its length was 14 feet 2 inches; its calibre 23 inches; the weight of its ball, when of cast iron, 1500 lbs.; and its whole weight 86,600 lbs., or a little above 38 tons."
Though called brass, it was, according to common report, composed of a mixture of precious metals. TheShroffs, or native bankers, were of that opinion, as they offered £12,000 for it, merely to melt down. Lord Lake preferred to send it as a trophy to Britain, and proceeded to have it transported to Calcutta on a raft. It proved too heavy for the latter, and capsizing sunk in the waters of the Ganges.
Another curious piece of ordnance, locally known asJubbar Jung, fell into our hands at Ghuzuee in 1842. It was of brass and beautifully ornamented; it carried 64-pound shot, and these being of hammered iron whizzed as they passed through the air. It made some havoc among the tents of our 40th Regiment, and the Huzarehs, followers of Ali, who joined General Nott at the siege, implored him to destroy "Jubbar Jung," for which they appeared to entertain a deep religious horror.
There are at this hour cannon at Bejapore, beside which our "Woolwich Infants" and Armstrong 100-ton guns sink into insignificance. One of these, called theMulk-e-Meidan, or "Sovereign of the Plains," cast by Roomi Khan, "the Turk of Roumelia," or first Monarch of Bejapore, an Ottoman of Constantinople, weighs forty tons; and, to crown all, Major Rennell mentions an old iron cannon at Dacca, which threw a shot 465 pounds in weight!
The last great gun actually used was King Theodore's huge bombarde at Magdala in 1868, for which he had an enormous number of stone balls made, and which he believed to be the Palladium of Abyssinia. It was shattered to pieces among his troops, on their first attempt to use it.
The last and most remarkable invention in artillery is a much needed fire-arm, which may supersede our boasted steel mountain ordnance, "the jointed gun" of Sir William Armstrong, which can be unscrewed into three separate pieces, each of which is light enough for conveyance on the back of a horse, and when put together form a powerful and long-range cannon, similar to the present field-piece.
Such a gun would have been invaluable in Ashantee, or among the mountains of Abyssinia; and the want of some such fire-arm was sorely felt at times during the Indian mutiny, especially about its close, when our moveable columns pursued the rebels in the deserts of Bekaneer, where the gun carriages of even the flying artillery at times sunk axle deep in the dry heavy sand, rendering them almost useless for service.
In Europe, this is peculiarly the age of enormous cannon. "Armour of two feet in thickness," says a recent writer, "and guns of one hundred tons in weight being now accomplished facts, and ships already bigger than theInflexiblebeing already in hand, we may well ask ourselves,What will be the next step?"
About the time of the accession of George III. to the throne, few domestic events made a greater sensation in the papers and periodicals of the day than the adventures and fate of a sea-captain named George Glass, especially in connection with a mutiny on board the brigEarl of Sandwich. This remarkable man, who was one of the fifteen children of John Glass, noted as the originator of the Scottish sect known as the Glassites, was born at Dundee in 1725. After graduating in the medical profession, he made several voyages, as surgeon of a merchant-ship (belonging to London), to the Brazils and the coast of Guinea; and in 1764, he published, by Dodsley, an interesting work in one volume quarto, entitledThe History of the Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands, translated from a Spanish manuscript.
He obtained command of a Guinea trader, and made several successful voyages, till the war with Spain broke out in January, 1762. Having saved a good round sum, he equipped a privateer, and took command of her as captain, to cruise against the French and Spaniards; but he had not been three days at sea, when his crew mutinied, and sent him that which is called in sea-phraseology a round-robin (a corruption of an old French military term, theruban rond, or round ribbon), in which they wrote their names in a circle; hence none could know who was the leader.
Arming himself with his cutlass and pistols, Glass came on deck, and offered to fight, hand to hand, any man who conceived himself to be wronged in any way. But the crew, knowing his personal strength, his skill and resolution, declined the challenge. He succeeded in pacifying them by fair words; and the capture of a valuable French merchantman a few days after put them all in excellent humour. This gleam of good fortune was soon after clouded by an encounter with an enemy's frigate, which, though twice the size of his privateer, Glass resolved to engage; and for two hours they fought broadside to broadside, till another French vessel bore down on him, and he was compelled to strike his colours, after half his crew had been killed and he had received a musket-shot in the shoulder.
He remained for some time a French prisoner of war in the Antilles, where he was treated with excessive severity; but upon being exchanged, he resolved to embark the remainder of his fortune in another privateer and "have it out," as he said, with the French and Dons. But he was again taken in action, and lost everything he had in the world.
On being released a second time, he was employed by London merchants in several voyages to the West Indies, in command of ships that fought their way without convoy; and according to a statement in theAnnual Register, he was captured no less thanseventimes. But after various fluctuations of fortune, when the general peace took place in 1763, he found himself possessed of two thousand guineas prize-money, and the reputation of being one of the best merchant captains in the Port of London.
About that time a Company there resolved to make an attempt to form a settlement on the west coast of Africa, by founding a harbour and town midway between the Cape de Verd and the river Senegal. In the London and other papers of the day we find many statements urging the advantage of opening up the Guinea-trade; among others, a strange letter from a merchant, who tells us he was taken prisoner in a battle on that coast, and that when escaping he "crossed a forest within view of the sea, where there lay elephants' teeth in quantities sufficient to load one hundred ships."
In the interests of this new Company Glass sailed in a ship of his own to the coast of Guinea, and selected and surveyed a harbour at a place which he was certain might become the centre of a great trade in teak and cam woods, spices, palm oil and ivory, wax and gold. Elated with his success, he returned to England, and laid his scheme before the ministry, among whom were John Earl of Sandwich, Secretary of State, and the Earl of Hillsborough, Commissioner of Trade and Plantations.
With truly national patience and perseverance he underwent all the procrastinations and delays of office, but ultimately obtained an exclusive right of trading to his own harbour for twenty years. Assisted by two merchants—the Company would seem to have failed—he fitted out his ship anew, and sailed for the intended harbour; and sent on shore a man who knew the country well, to make propositions of trade with the natives, who put him to death the moment they saw him.
Undiscouraged by this event, Captain Glass found means to open up a communication with the king of the country, to lay before him the wrong that had been done, and the advantages that were certain to accrue from mutual trade and barter. The sable potentate affected to be pleased with the proposal, but only to the end that he might get Glass completely into his power; but the Scotsman was on his guard, and foiled him.
The king then attempted to poison the whole crew by provisions which he sent on board impregnated by some deadly drug. Glass, by his previous medical knowledge, perhaps, discovered this in time; but so scarce had food become in his vessel, that he was compelled to go with a few hands in an open boat to the Canaries, where he hoped to purchase what he wanted from the Spaniards.
In his absence the savages were encouraged to attack the ship in their war-canoes; but were repulsed by a sharp musketry-fire opened upon them by the remainder of the crew, who, losing heart by the protracted absence of the captain, quitted his fatal harbour, and sailed for the Thames, which they reached in safety.
Meanwhile the unfortunate captain, after landing on one of the Canaries, presented a petition to the Spanish governor to the effect that he might be permitted to purchase food; but that officer, inflamed by national animosity, cruelly threw him into a dark and damp dungeon, and kept him there without pen, ink, or paper, on the accusation that he was a spy. Being thus utterly without means of making his case known, he contrived another way of communicating with the external world. One account has it that he concealed a pencilled note in a loaf of bread which fell into the hands of the British consul; another states that he wrote with a piece of charcoal on a ship-biscuit and sent it to the captain of a British man-of-war that was lying off the island, and who with much difficulty, and after being imprisoned himself, effected the release of Glass. The latter, on being joined by his wife and daughter, who had come in search of him, set sail for England in 1765, on board the merchant brigEarl of Sandwich, Captain Cochrane.
Glass doubtless supposed his troubles were now over; but the knowledge that much of his property and a great amount of specie, one hundred thousand pounds, belonging to others, was on board, induced four of the crew to form a conspiracy to murder every one else and seize the ship. These mutineers were respectively George Gidly, the cook, a native of the west of England; Peter M'Kulie, an Irishman; Andrew Zekerman, a Hollander; and Richard H. Quintin, a Londoner. On three different nights they are stated to have made the attempt, but were baffled by the vigilance of Captain Glass, rather than that of his country man, Captain Cochrane; but at eleven o'clock at night on the 30th of September, 1765, it chanced, as shown at their trial, that these four miscreants had together the watch on deck, when theSandwichwas already in sight of the coast of Ireland; and when Captain Cochrane, after taking a survey aloft, was about to return to the cabin, Peter M'Kulie brained him with "an iron bar" (probably a marline-spike), and threw him overboard.
A cry that had escaped Cochrane alarmed the rest of the crew, who were all dispatched in the same manner as they rushed on deck in succession. This slaughter and the din it occasioned, roused Captain Glass, who was below in bed; but he soon discovered what was occurring, and, after giving one glance on deck, hurried away to get his sword. M'Kulie, imagining the cause of his going back, went down the steps leading to the cabin, and stood in the dark, expecting Glass's return, and suddenly seized his arms from behind; but the captain, being a man of great strength, wrenched his sword-arm free, and on being assailed by the three other assassins, plunged his weapon into the arm of Zekerman, when the blade became wedged or entangled. It was at length wrenched forth, and Glass was slain by repeated stabs of his own weapon, while his dying cries were heard by his wife and daughter—two unhappy beings who were ruthlessly thrown overboard and drowned.
Besides these four victims, James Pincent, the mate, and three others, lost their lives. The mutineers now loaded one of the boats with the money, chests, and so forth, and then scuttled theSandwich, and landed at Ross on the coast of Ireland. But suspicion speedily attached to them; they were apprehended, and, confessing the crimes of which they had been guilty, were tried before the Court of King's Bench, Dublin, and sentenced to death. They were accordingly executed in St. Stephen's Green, on the 10th of October, 1765.
Though it occurred so long ago as the time of Henry IV. of France, the story we are about to relate formed one of the most remarkablecauses célèbresbefore the Parliament of Paris, when Renée Corbeau, a young demoiselle of Angers, in Normandy, by her eloquence in a court of justice, and by her singular self-sacrifice, saved the life of a false and dastardly lover, to whom she was devotedly attached.
In the year 1594, when Henry IV., justly surnamed the Great (though his passions betrayed him into errors and involved him in difficulties), was on the throne of France, a young man named M. Pousset, a native of Tees, an old episcopal city of Normandy, was studying the Civil and Canon Law at the University of Angers, in those days a famous seat of learning. While thus engaged, M. Pousset was introduced to Mademoiselle Renée Corbeau, the daughter of a citizen. She is described as having been a girl of great beauty of person and with great modesty of manner, though witty and lively in spirit,folatré et caressante, and full of nameless graces. Everyone loved and admired Renée, and when but a youth Pousset sighed for her. He soon learned to love her passionately, and we are told "that he no longer lived but to see and converse with her."
She in turn became deeply attached to Pousset, who proposed marriage, and gave her, in writing, a document to that effect, though her parents were in circumstances so limited that he dared not consult his own (who were people of wealth, rank, and ambition) on this important subject. So the lovers dreamed on, and on the faith of the written promise, Renée, it would appear, yielded too far, and fell, as her mother Eve fell before her; and then repentance came when too late.
The unfortunate Renée had, in time, to make a confidante of her mother, who in her grief and anger revealed all to M. Corbeau. He heaped the most bitter reproaches on their daughter, but agreed that some plan should be adopted to bring Pousset, who was now studiously absenting himself, to reason and a sense of justice. It was arranged that he and Madame Corbeau should feign a journey to a little country mansion they possessed not far from Angers, and that Renée should press Pousset to visit her, when they should take advantage of the occasion to surprise him; a project which was executed with complete success.
Thrown completely off his guard by this unexpected stratagem, the lover said with much apparent candour:
"Monsieur Corbeau, be not alarmed for the error which our love for each other has led us into; but pardon us, I beseech you. My intentions are still most honourable, and I shall be but too happy to espouse your daughter."
The incensed Corbeau was somewhat comforted by this prompt promise of reparation, and sent immediately for a notary, his friend, who lived close by. The latter drew up a formal contract of marriage in legal form, and to this, with Renée, M. Pousset appended his signature and seal, after which he took a tender farewell of the weeping girl, and retired with the view of, reluctantly, breaking the matter to his family; but so true is it that "affection is the root of love in woman, and passion is the root of love in man," that from the hour in which he signed the—to him—fatal contract, all his regard for Renée evaporated.
Her beauty and her sorrow alike failed to impress him now, and the faithless Pousset repented him so bitterly of what he angrily deemed a legal entanglement, that he hastened to Tees and unfolded the whole of the affair to his father in a story artfully coloured and fashioned to suit himself.
M. Pousset the senior, who possessed a magnificent estate, never doubted but that his amiable and facilesonhad been entrapped by an artful girl and her parents, and sternly told him that he could never approve of his marriage with one whose portion was so small, and desired him to commit her, the contract, and the whole affair, to oblivion. While the document, signed and sealed existed, this, however, proved impossible; so young Pousset, either by his father's advice or his own inclination, took refuge in the bosom of the Church, and was somewhat too speedily ordained sub-deacon, and then deacon, thinking thereby to vitiate the power of the contract, and to create for life an invincible barrier between himself and Renée.
With all the grief and horror a tender and affectionate heart could feel when love is so repaid by black perfidy, she heard these tidings, and her soul seemed to die within her; but her old father, who was filled with just indignation, and whose sword the ordination of Pousset kept in its scabbard, raised a civil action against him before the principal court at Angers for having deluded, and then declined, to marry his daughter in the face of the notary's contract.
The recreant was compelled to appear; but he appealed against the order, and denied the jurisdiction of the court; hence the cause was brought before the Parliament of Paris. Before this tribunal, then, were brought the wrongs of Renée Corbeau, and the whole affair seemed so cruel and odious to the judges—especially the fact of Pousset having taken holy orders (and thereby degraded them) to evade the contract of marriage—that they condemned him to espouse Renée or lose his head by the sword of the executioner.
He urged that the sanctity of holy orders utterly precluded the former reparation. On this the court unanimously declared that he must undergo the latter. He was accordingly replaced in the Bastile; the priest who was to attend in his last moments came to prepare him for death, and as all sentences were summarily executed in those days, already the headsman awaited him.
The heart of the poor girl, who loved him still, was now wrung with new anguish and pity, and she accused herself of being the cause of his approaching doom. Crushed by that dreadful conviction, in her anxiety to save him, or at least have his sentence mitigated in some manner, she conceived the idea of taking all the guilt of his position uponherself.
Hastening to the old Palais de Justice, she entered the great hall, the centre of which was then occupied by the famous marble table which Victor Hugo describes as being of a single piece, so long, and so broad and thick, that it was doubtful if in the world there was such another block of marble. Imploring the astonished judges to hear her, she knelt before them, and while scarcely daring to raise her eyes from the floor, she told them in trembling accents that in condemning her lover-husband, for such she deemed him, they had forgotten that she too was culpable; that by his death she would be sunk into sorrow and covered with ignominy; and that while seeking to avenge her, or repair her honour, they would bring upon her the opprobrium of all France!
The judges listened in bewildered silence, while in a low and still more tremulous voice, Renée continued thus:
"Messieurs—I will no longer conceal my crime. Remorse of conscience now forces me to declare that, thinking you might compel M. Pousset to marry me, I concealed the fact that I snared him into loving me—that I loved him first, and was thus the source of all my own sorrow! You deem it a crime that he took refuge in holy orders to avoid the fulfilment of his contract; yet, messieurs, that was nothisdoing, but resulted from the will of a proud and avaricious father, who is, in that matter, the real criminal. Spare him then, I implore you—spare him to the world, if not to me! He has declared that his orders preclude his marrying me; and for that declaration you ordain that he must die. Oh, what matters his asserting that he would formally espouse me if he could; and because he cannot, you condemn him to die, after giving hima choice. Who here can doubt that he would marry me in spite of his deacon's orders? Though I am but a weak and foolish girl, I know that we may yet be wedded, could we but obtain the dispensation of his Holiness Clement VIII. Daily we expect in Paris his Legate, who possesses sovereign powers. At his feet I will solicit that dispensation; and oh, be assured, messieurs, that my love and my prayers will obtain it. Suspend your terrible sentence, then, till he arrives."
After a pause, during which she was overcome with agitation, she spoke again:
"Think of all he has endured since his sentence has been delivered, and of all that I am enduring now! Should I have among you but a few voices for me, ought these not to win me some favour of humanity over the rest, though they be more in number! but alas! should all be inflexible, permit me, in mercy at least, to die with him I love, and by the same weapon."
It is recorded that the unhappy Renée's prayer met with a very favourable reception, and that the remarkable tone of her self-accusation, of having "ensnared" M. Pousset, gave a new colour to his alleged crime. "The judges," we are told, "lost not a word of her oration, which was pronounced with a clear sweet voice, and her words found a ready echo in their hearts, while the wonderful charms of her person, her tears and her eloquence, were too powerful not to melt, if they failed to persuade, men of humanity."
She was requested to withdraw while they consulted, and the First President, M. Villeroy, after collecting their votes, found himself enabled to grant arespitefor six months, that a dispensation might be obtained if possible; and on this being announced, the plaudits of assembled thousands made the roof of the Palais de Justice ring in honour of Pousset's best advocate, Renée Corbeau.
Ere long the Roman Legate (Cardinal de Pellevé) came to Paris; but, on hearing the ugly story of Pousset, he conceived such indignation against him, for the whole tenor of his conduct, that he constantly turned a deaf ear to every application in his favour. Soon the last month of the respite drew to a close, and the fatal day was near when Pousset must be brought forth to die!
The unexpected hostility of the Legate cast Renée once more into despair, an emotion all the more terrible that the announcement of M. Villeroy had given her brilliant, perhaps happy, hopes. These, however, did not die. She obtained an audience of Henry IV. soon after he had stormed the town of Dreux and made his public entry into Paris, and, as he was cognisant of her miserable story, on her knees at his feet she once more sought an intercession for her doomed lover, if he could be termed so still.
Henry had too often felt the passion of love not to be moved by the singular beauty of the suppliant, by her sorrow, and the eloquence with which affection endowed her. He raised her from the floor and besought her to take courage, as he would now be her friend and advocate.
The Cardinal de Pellevé could not decline the prayer of such an intercessor as Henry the Great, and, as the luckless Pousset had not received the higher orders of the priesthood, his Eminence granted a dispensation in the name of Clement VIII. The marriage ceremony was duly performed, in fulfilment of the contract signed at Angers, and Renée Corbeau and the lover she had rescued "lived ever after in the most perfect union; the husband ever regarding his wife as his guardian angel, who had saved his life and honour."
THE BAVARIAN POISONER.
This singular wretch, a woman of a nature so fiendish, and with whom the destruction of human life by secret poisoning became a veritable passion, was beheaded in the ancient city of Nuremberg, in Bavaria, in April, 1810, after a protracted trial, that brought to light the long catalogue of her iniquities.
It would appear that she was born in Nuremberg in 1760, during the reign of Maximilian Joseph—the same who concluded the famous treaty with Maria Theresa—and was left an orphan by the death of both her parents in 1765; but, as she was the heiress to some property, she remained under guardianship, and was carefully educated till her nineteenth year, when she was married—against her inclination, it is asserted—to a notary named Zwanziger.
Young, pretty, and accustomed to much gaiety in the house of her wealthy guardian, the lonely life she felt herself condemned to pass in the house of her husband formed an unpleasant contrast, all the more so, as Zwanziger, when not absent on business, devoted his whole time to the bottle and became a confirmed bibber.
Anna meanwhile strove to forget her gloom and her griefs by novel reading, her favourite works being the "Sorrows of Werter" and those of Pamela; but the dissipation of Zwanziger, his neglect of his profession, on one hand, and his lavish extravagance on the other, soon brought them to wretchedness and ruin; and she, having considerable personal attractions, though she appeared hideous and repulsive at the time of her arraignment, "now attempted to prop the falling establishment by making the best use of them;" and amid this miserable state of affairs, Zwanziger died suddenly, leaving her to continue her life, which was now one of deception and licentiousness, alone.
Her fortune wasted, her prospects blasted, she became filled with a hatred of mankind, and with rage and bitterness at her fate. All the better sympathies which her nature may have possessed in girlhood faded out, and their place was taken by a stern and grim resolution to better her now destitute condition at all risks and hazards.
It does not seem to be clearly known when the idea of systematic poisoning occurred to her, but it was eventually suspected that she had disposed of her husband by this means, and before she was received as housekeeper into the family of Herr Justiz-Amptman Glaser. She had then spent many years as a wanderer, was fifty years of age, and without a trace of her former charms.
This was in 1808, when Glaser was residing at Pegnitz in Upper Franconia, but was living apart from his wife. Anna Schonleben (for she seldom seems to have taken her husband's name), having her own ends in view, adopting the rôle of friendship, effected a reconciliation between Glaser and his wife, who returned to his home, and within a month after was seized by a sudden and mysterious illness, of which she died in the greatest agony.
As there was no appearance of Glaser wishing her to take the place of the deceased, Anna quitted his service for that of the Herr Justiz-Amptmann Grohmann, who was unmarried and only in his thirty-eighth year. He was in delicate health; thus she had every opportunity for studying to please him, by care, attention, and an affectionate regard for his comforts; but age was against her; her apparently unremitting attention won her no favour from Herr Grohmann, who received all his medicines from her own hands, and among them some dose, suggested by revenge, as he died on the 8th of May, 1809, "his disease being accompanied by violent internal pains of the stomach, dryness of the skin,erbrechen," &c.
She acted her part so well, she appeared so inconsolable for his loss, and won among his friends a character so high and valuable as a careful and gentle sick-nurse, that she was almost immediately received into the household of the Kammer-Amptmann Gebhard, in that capacity. On the 13th of May, only five days after the death of Grohmann, Madame Gebhard was delivered of a baby. Both mother and child were doing well till the 16th, when the former was seized with precisely the same symptoms before named, and after seven days of agony—during which she frequently asserted that she had been poisoned—she expired.
The funeral over, the widower found himself unable to manage his household and family, and not unnaturally thought he could not do better than retain in his service, for that purpose, Anna Schonleben, who had nursed his wife, as she had done his deceased friend, in their last hours; so she remained in his house invested with all the authority ofhaushalterin, though some of his friends hinted at the inexpediency of having as an inmate one whom some fatality seemed to attend.
Gebhard laughed at this as superstitious; but there was one friend, in particular, who recurred to this matter again and again so pertinaciously—though upon what grounds he never precisely explained—that he came to the resolution of acting upon his advice, and to Anna he broke the subject of her impending dismissal, but as gently as possible, for she had acquired a certain ascendancy over him.
She merely expressed her surprise and regret, and the subsequent day was fixed for her departure to Bayreuth; but prior to that event she resolved on a terrible revenge. She arranged all the rooms as usual, and filled thesalzfastenin the kitchen, saying the while, that "it was always the custom for those who left to fill it with salt for those who came in their place;" and when the droski for her conveyance came to the door, she took in her arms the infant child of Gebhard—the infant whose mother she had poisoned, and which was now five months old—and while feigning to caress it, she placed between "its boneless gums" a soft biscuit soaked in milk.
Then she drove away, but she had not been gone an hour, when the child and every servant in the house became seized with spasms, pains, and violent sickness. In this instance none, however, died; but Gebhard, recalling the advice of his friend, now became full of alarm and suspicion. Thesalzfasten, which Anna Schonleben had been seen so fussily to fill, was examined, and a great quantity of arsenic was found to be mixed with the salt. The barrel from which the latter was taken was also submitted to chemical analysis, and arsenic was found therein.
It now came suddenly to the knowledge or memory of the simple and confiding Kammer-Amptmann, that on one occasion, in the August of 1809, two gentlemen who had dined with him, were seized by the same symptoms as his servants ere the cloth was well off the table; that one of the servants, named Barbara Waldmann, with whom she had frequent quarrels, was seized in the same fashion after taking a cup of coffee from her hands; that she had once offered a lad named Johann Kraus a glass of brandy in the cellar, which he declined on seeing something white permeating through it; that on another occasion, the deliverer of a message to whom she had given a glass of white Rosenhourr, was sick and ill for days after, barely escaping death; and, though last not least, Herr Gebhard remembered that on the occasion of a dinner party, given on the 1st of September, after partaking of the wine whichshebrought from the cellar, he and all his guests, five in number, were seized by the usual spasms and sickness.
Gebhard and others were astonished now, that the series of sudden deaths and violent illnesses occurring to all who took anything from the hand of the woman Schonleben, had not excited their suspicions before. The bodies of those who had died were quietly exhumed; the contents of the stomach of each were subjected to chemical analysis, and the conclusion come to was that two of them at least had been poisoned by arsenic; and reports were drawn up and depositions made, while the culprit, all unaware of the Nemesis that was about to overtake her, was living at Bayreuth, from whence she had the hardihood to write to the Kammer-Amptmann more than one letter, in which she bitterly reproached him for his base ingratitude in dismissing from his service one who had been as a mother to his motherless child.
It is supposed that the object of these epistles was to procure her reinstatement in his household, but on the 19th of October, to her consternation, she was suddenly arrested, and on being searched, three packets of poison—two being arsenic—were found upon her person. After being brought to trial, she protested her innocence, and acted with singular obstinacy and ingenuity combined, till the 16th of April, 1810, when she fairly broke down, and admitted having murdered Madame Glaser by two doses of poison; but the moment the confession left her lips, according to Feuerbach, she fell as if struck by a thunderbolt, and in strong convulsions was removed to her dungeon, under sentence of death.
It is stated, that she had committed and attempted so many murders, that they had lost all character of horror to her; that she merely viewed them as petty indiscretions, or the punishing of those who offended her or who stood in her way, till at last, to poison became almost a pastime or a passion; hence, when the poison taken from her at Bayreuth was shown to her some weeks afterwards, in the old castle of Plassenburg at Culmbach, her eyes sparkled and her whole frame seemed to vibrate with delight, as if she saw again, in that deadly white drug, an old and valued friend or servant; but she admitted, that fly-powder was what she chiefly used to revenge herself upon her fellow-servants by mixing it with their beer; and that prior to quitting the house of Gebhard she had frequently poisoned the coffee, wine, and beer of such guests as she chose to dislike. She declared openly, that her death was a fortunate thing for many people, as she felt certain she could not have left off poisoning as long as she lived.
She steadily ascended the scaffold, bowed to the people, with a smile on her old, wrinkled, and, then, hideous face, laid her head on the block, and without shrinking or moving a muscle, had it struck off by the axe of the publicscharfrichter, or executioner; and so ended this Germancause célèbre.
"It cannot be that you are about to be married!" exclaimed Jack Westbrook passionately as he held the girl's hands half forcibly and gazed into her shrinking eyes; "I will not believe it—even from your own lips."
But the girl, silent and sad, hesitated to reply.
The glory of an April sunset lay over all the sweet Kentish landscape; a little tarn between two white chalk cliffs shone like molten gold, with black coots swimming, and the pearly clouds reflected on its surface; the emerald green buds were bursting in their beauty in the coppice and hedgerows, where the linnet and the speckled thrush were preparing their nests; the unclosing crocus and the drooping daffodil were making the cottage gardens gay; and every where, there were coming "fresh flowers and leaves to deck the dead season's bier."
It was a period of the opened year when unconsciously the human heart feels hopeful and happy, even the hearts of the old and the ailing; but the souls of those two who lingered, near the old Saxon lichgate, roofed with ancient thatch and velvet moss, and by the old worn stile that led to the village church of Craybourne, were sad indeed; they were on the eve of parting, and—for ever!
"It cannot be, Laura, that you are about to be married, after all," repeated Jack Westbrook, a soldier-like young fellow, not much over five and twenty, dark, handsome and clad in that kind of grey tweed suit, which looks so gentlemanly when worn by one of good bearing and style, and such Jack certainly was.
"It is but too true—too true, Jack," replied Laura, while her tears fell fast, and she strove to release her trembling hands from her lover's passionate clasp.
Laura Wenlock was more than merely handsome; in her soft face there was a singular and piquante charm, a loveliness that was more penetrating and of a higher order than mere regularity of feature, as its expression varied so much—a charm that would have delighted an artist, while it would have baffled his powers to reproduce it. Her eyes were violet blue; her hair was auburn, shot with gold, and ruddy golden it seemed ever in the sunshine.
"You don't mean to say that you are about to marryformoney?" said Westbrook impetuously.
"Far from it, Jack—oh! don't think so meanly—so basely of me," urged Laura piteously.
"What then?"
"Withmoney—sounds different, doesn't it, Jack, dear?" said the girl with a sob and a sickly smile.
Westbrook gnawed his thick brown moustache, and eyed her gloomily, then almost malevolently and, anon; pleadingly, for his fate was in her hands.
"From all I have heard," said he, "I feared it would come to this; but oh, no, no, surely it cannot be—that I am now to lose you!"
"It must be; the fatal papers have already been prepared."
"The settlements!"
"Yes; debts beyond what we could ever have anticipated, have overtaken my father, and you know that his vicarage here at Craybourne is a poor one, Jack, a very poor one, and his poverty would be the ruin of my two brothers. My marriage will be the saving of them all—the Colonel is so rich."
"Philip Daubeny, of Craybourne Hall?"
"Yes," replied Laura, with averted eyes
"I saw him struck down by the sun on the march between Jehanumbad and Shetanpore; and I would, with all my heart, he were there still!"
"Don't say so, Jack," urged the girl; "Colonel Daubeny is good, and brave, and generous—oh, most generous! God knows, Jack, if you would take me as I am, without a shilling, I would become your wedded wife to-night," added Laura, blinded with tears; "but you want me to wait for you, Jack, and I cannot wait, for the fate of those over there—at home—is in my power," continued Laura, turning towards the old thatched vicarage, the lozenged casements of which were glittering in the sunshine between the stems of the trees.
"To wait, of course," said he, huskily, and relinquishing her hands in a species of sullen despair; "I have but little to live on just yet, since I had to sell out of the Hussars after that infernal loss on the Oaks, and, of course, I cannot supply you with equipages and luxuries as Daubeny can do. But do have patience with me, Laura."
"I cannot—I cannot!" wailed the girl; "the dreadfulwhyI have told you a thousand times."
"You never loved me truly."
"You wrong me; no one has ever been more dear to me than you, Jack."
He laughed bitterly.
"Yet you will marry Philip Daubeny? Have you thought how shameful is a mercenary marriage?"
"I have, indeed, God knows how deeply, how bitterly and prayerfully, in the silent night, when none could see my tears, save Him! Take back your ring, dear Jack, and let us part friends;" and drawing the emblem from her tiny finger, she touched it with her trembling lips, and restored it to him.
"Friends!" he exclaimed, bitterly and scornfully, while in his fine dark eyes there shone a flash of light, where evil seemed to rival love and sorrow, as he flung the golden hoop, with its pearl cluster, into the tarn, and left her without another word or glance! He strode away down the sequestered path that led to the churchyard stile, crushing, as if vengefully, under his feet the wayside flowers, the tender blossoms and sprays of spring; and the girl watched him till his retreating figure disappeared in the shady vista of the lane.
Then she interlaced her slender fingers over her auburn hair and cast her eyes upwards, full of sorrow and intense compunction for the pain she had been compelled to inflict; but there was no despair in her expression, nor was there in her heart, we hope.
"God bless you, dear—dear Jack; you will forget me in time. All is over now!" she murmured.
But the memory of Westbrook's harassed face, and the winning sound of his voice haunted her in the hours of the night as she lay feverish, restless, in a passion of bitter weeping; and full of sad and terrible thoughts, tossing from side to side, sleepless on her pillow.