Chapter 9

DIVERSE HUMAN HEARTS.

'The miner Roller waits without, respected Herr Burgomaster!' announced Jüchziger, the town servant.

'Bid him come in,' said Schönleben. 'Yes, colonel,' he continued, turning to Schweinitz, who was with him; 'I assure you, if confidence may be put in any human being, you may trust this man. He is brave, faithful, and yet shrewd. He will come back as surely as a dove returns to its young. You may send him without hesitation.'

'Would you like to earn three ducats, my good fellow?' Schweinitz asked Roller as the latter entered the room.

'How, your excellency?' inquired the miner.

'You are to take despatches from us to Marshal Piccolomini in Bohemia, lay our condition before him in full, and get him to hasten to our assistance. The service is not without some danger, for you will have to make your way twice through the enemy's lines, and die rather than betray your secret.'

'So I should suppose,' replied Roller dryly.

'Well, what do you say? are you willing to do it, or not?' inquired Schönleben and Schweinitz together.

'This is no question of a reward,' said Roller. 'You command, and I obey.'

'You are a fine fellow,' said Schönleben heartily; 'and I will myself give you a couple of ducats extra if you do your business satisfactorily.'

'I crave your pardon, respected Herr Burgomaster!' replied Roller, 'I do not sell my life for silver or gold, for if so I should take sides with friend or foe, according to which would give me the highest pay. But it seems to me that we all make up, as it were, one body in what we have to do, to defend town, wife and child, from the enemy. Very well, then; you are the head, and I am one of the least members, that has to do just what the head bids it. That is what I believe, and I try to fight bravely and do my duty because I believe it.'

Schweinitz shook the brave miner heartily by the hand, saying: 'With men like you I can hold the mountain-city for a long time indeed, but we must not neglect means that may help rid us of the enemy. Come with me, my good fellow, while I make out your papers.'

The same day several children, with Roller's Dollie among them, were crouching round the air-holes of the cellar under the town hall. 'Oh, we do so want to see the Swedish prisoners!' said the child to Conrad, who happened to be passing on the way to his mother's house. 'One of them has such a dreadful great beard,' Dollie continued; 'I am sure he must be General Wrangel's bagpiper. Only think, if he had his pipes here, he could play to us! Just peep in there; sometimes one of them comes to the window and looks up at us.'

Conrad complied with the child's wish, kneeling down beside her. Suddenly a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder, and a voice he always dreaded to hear said, this time, however, in very friendly tones: 'Hallo, Conrad, and what may you be doing here?'

It was into the face of his stepfather that the startled boy stared as he rose hastily to his feet.

'Come along, my son,' said Jüchziger very blandly. 'I have something to tell you.' So saying, he drew the boy aside into the passageway of the town hall. 'Listen to me,' he went on good-humouredly; 'I want you to do something for your mother.'

'For my mother!' said Conrad cheerfully. 'Oh yes; I shall be so glad to do it!'

'And for you and me at the same time,' said Jüchziger. 'I just want you to go out to our house beyond the Peter Gate.'

'But it's pulled down,' objected Conrad.

'Yes, of course, I know that; but the cellar is there still, and in one corner of that cellar your mother buried a little box with all sorts of precious things in it. I want you to go and dig it up, and bring it to me.'

'But the Swedes are all round out there. They will be sure to kill me, and take the box; they are most tremendous thieves.'

'You needn't trouble yourself about that. I take care of the Swedish prisoners, and one of them has given me a safe-conduct' (he pronounced this word very carefully),--'a safe-conduct that I shall give to you. You are only to get it out if you meet a Swede, and then they'll not only not hurt a hair of your head, but be very kind indeed to you. But you must be sure and not let another soul see the safe-conduct, or else it will all be of no use.'

'Why did mother never say anything about the box?' asked Conrad.

'H'm!' said Jüchziger; 'she--well--she--in fact, she didn't quite trust me, I'm sorry to say, and wanted to keep all the things in it for you. But now she sees how wrong that was, and she has confessed all about it to me. I don't want the box for myself; all I want is to see it out of danger.'

'But how can I get out?' asked Conrad again. 'Nobody may leave the town.'

'In about an hour's time there is to be a sortie from the Donat Gate, and you can manage to creep out with the men. Roller the miner is going out with them as well; he and Wahle are going all the way to General Piccolomini in Bohemia, but on no account show the safe-conduct to him.'

'I should like just to run home to mother,' said Conrad, 'to tell her about the box, and say good-bye to her.'

'Now would you really be so unkind to a poor, frightened, blind woman as that?' said his stepfather. 'Why, there's Roller; he has not even told his wife, though he is going all the way to Bohemia, and you want to make your mother unhappy because you're going a few yards outside the city wall.'

'It is quite true, stepfather,' said Conrad with a sigh. 'So give me my safe-conduct, and tell me how I am to get into the town again.'

'You can easily do that. You will only have to creep up the bed of the Münzbach. No one will take any notice of a slight youth like you.'

Conrad then received from his stepfather a folded and sealed paper, on which was written in large letters the word 'Safe-Conduct.'

Underneath were several more words, but as they were all in Swedish the boy could make nothing out of them. When he had taken leave of Jüchziger, the latter muttered to himself: 'Either the Swedes will put an end to him, or else he will do my errand and never be a bit the wiser himself. It will be a good day's work for me whichever way it goes.'

According to his stepfather's orders, Conrad hid the safe-conduct in his breast. He did not understand exactly what the thing was, but this mystery only made him think all the more highly of it, and filled his mind with a sort of confidence that his dangerous errand rendered highly useful. When he found himself really outside the gate, and heard the tumult of battle all around him, his heart beat thick and fast. The men who made the sortie threw themselves at once on the enemy's advanced works, shot or cut down such Swedes as were in them, set fire to the wooden barricades and some detached houses that the Swedes had used against the town, and destroyed everything belonging to the enemy on which they could lay their hands. As soon as the foe showed signs of bringing up men in force, the Freibergers fell back fighting, and carried off their booty into the town.

Then Conrad found himself in a desperate fix. From the ramparts of the town a steady fire was being poured on the advancing Swedes, who returned it with interest, so that the lad, finding himself between two fires, did not know which way to turn, and at last, in his bewilderment, started to run straight across country. Suddenly, without any warning, he went head over heels into a cutting about six feet deep that crossed his line of march, and proved to be neither more nor less than one of the trenches by which the Swedish sharp-shooters got so close up to the town.

As soon as Conrad had somewhat recovered from his sudden plunge, he began to look about him with much astonishment. The pathway in which he stood was so narrow he could easily touch both its sides at once by simply stretching out his arms. As he started to hurry along it, he stumbled on the dead bodies of several soldiers, some of which looked so dreadful that he turned about and ran as hard as he could go in the opposite direction. As he rounded a sharp corner, he ran into an enemy, who seemed as much surprised as himself at the unexpected meeting, and uttered a sudden cry of alarm. This enemy, however, was armed, and heaved up his 'morning-star'[1] for a tremendous blow.

Conrad, in his terror, sprang back several steps, and drawing his paper from his breast, called out: 'Stop! I've got a safe-conduct.'

At these words the man let his weapon sink, and stood staring at the boy, who was again cautiously approaching him holding out the paper.

'Why, bless me!' said the man at last, 'isn't this Conrad Schmidt from the Erbis Street?'

'What! is it you, Master Prieme?' said Conrad joyfully.

'What are--at least, how came you here?' asked Prieme.

'I came out with the sortie,' said Conrad.

'So did I,' grumbled Prieme. 'In the heat of battle I struck too hard at a Swede, just on the edge of this abominable ditch, and then my foot slipped and down I came into it myself, and the detestable thing's so deep there is no getting out again. Perhaps, with your help, I can manage to climb out.'

The attempt was made and proved a failure, while the continuous firing above their heads hinted that it would be much safer to keep out of the upper world for a time.

'So it seems I only came out of the town to tumble into this ditch,' grumbled Prieme again. 'If the Swedes put in an appearance, things will pretty soon begin to look ugly for me.'

'Just you keep close to me,' said Conrad patronizingly. 'I've got a safe-conduct.'

'Where is it?' asked Prieme, looking at him in astonishment. 'I can't see one.'

'Here it is all right,' said Conrad producing it. 'Can you read?'

'What stupid rubbish!' muttered Prieme. 'Now, how can a scrap of paper like that be a safe-conduct? Why, a safe-conduct is a sort of thing that even the most savage enemy is forced to respect. Why, who told you such a pack of nonsense as that?'

Either because his tumble had muddled his brains, or for some other reason best known to himself, Conrad straightway cast all his stepfather's cautions to the winds, and told neighbour Prieme the whole story of the safe-conduct and why he was there.

'This seems to me rather serious,' said the worthy citizen, speaking half to himself. 'To be sure your stepfather is, in a manner of speaking, a bit of a magistrate; but then we all know how people we should never have expected--why, there was the Burgomaster of Bautzen was loaded into a cannon and fired off for trying to betray his native city to the enemy. At all events, Jüchziger can have no right to correspond with the Swedes without the commandant's knowledge. So give me that thing over here directly.'

Conrad protested against the abrupt demand, and, suddenly calling to mind his stepfather's forgotten orders, made a frantic attempt to hide the safe-conduct in his breast again. Master Prieme's strong arm would soon have gained the day, however, and deprived the boy of his paper, had not the arrival of a troop of the enemy put a sudend [Transcriber's note: sudden?] stop to their altercation.

Master Prieme, taken with a weapon in his hand, was made a prisoner of war; and Conrad Schmidt, loudly calling attention to his safe-conduct, was at once marched off to the enemy's headquarters.

Here he had a first-rate opportunity to make nearer acquaintance with the dreaded Swedes. He was led about from one point to another. He saw the batteries, mortars, and siege-guns that were destroying his native town; he saw whole regiments of Swedes; but to his immense consolation he did not see any of those men who tortured people and slaughtered little children. In front of Marshal Torstenson's quarters a huge cask of wine was being unloaded, a task in which several peasants were forced to render unwilling aid. When their work was done, however, they got off with nothing worse than a few cuffs. He saw, indeed, plenty of great beards and many dark-looking faces of very scowling aspect, for the Swedes were encamped before Freiberg in no rose-garden; but after all he could not make out any very great difference between the Swedish and Saxon fighting-men.

'I can see one thing very plainly,' said Conrad to himself, 'soldiers are all as much alike as one egg is like another. One wears a grey coat, another a red one, and another a green one, and that's about all the difference between them.'

He was suddenly interrupted in the midst of his reflections by the approach of a trooper, who came towards him with some appearance of curiosity, and with a single glance of his piercing eyes threw the boy's whole soul into a state of panic fear.

'God be with me!' murmured Conrad. 'That's the fierce Swede with the red beard again. I am sure he is taking out a pistol now to make sure of getting a good aim at me this time!'

Happily, his fears were not of long duration, for a sudden call in good German of, 'Hillner, the major wants you,' relieved him of the Swede's presence. 'Hillner!' whispered Conrad to himself. 'I wonder whether everybody with black hair and a red beard is called Hillner.'

The lad was now summoned to appear before Field-Marshal Torstenson. This was worse than his worst expectations; for was not this man the cause of all the trouble, the scourge that with its thousand lashes was tormenting the Saxon land? Conrad stepped trembling into the hall of the Bergwald Hospital, where he found a group of superior officers gathered round their general, who sat by a window with Conrad's safe-conduct in his hand. This, then, was the man whose hand played with the lives and property of so many thousand people. From just inside the door where he had to stand, Conrad stared with beating heart at the dreadful man who had conquered great armies, plundered and wasted whole countries, taken strongholds by storm, and was now conquered himself. For a shaft was quivering in his flesh that he could by no means draw out; his foot was, so to speak, stung by a glowing needle that could never be cooled, and that no medicine could heal. In the olden times men were laid on the torture-bench that they might be forced to confess their evil deeds; and God Himself sometimes uses pain to bring a sinner to repentance, when he has turned a deaf ear to all the voices of conscience and religion.

Torstenson, a man scarcely forty years of age, was seated in an arm-chair. He had no remedies to oppose to the grinding foe in his foot but patience and a bandage of coarse hemp. But such is mankind that this great general, who had at his disposal the lives of thousands of his fellow-creatures, could not control his own desires; for near him stood a table on which among other things was a bottle of wine and a large goblet partly filled, to which he betook himself from time to time. The contents of the 'safe-conduct' did not seem to afford him much consolation, for he threw it angrily on the table.

'That is my last weapon,' he said to one of the officers. 'The town must and shall be mine, this week, this very day, and without the help of a scoundrel, too!'

'Your excellency!' said the attendant physician warningly, as he saw the general's gaze turn again towards the goblet.

'Ah, doctor,' said the marshal peevishly; 'take my word for it, it was not the wine, but those six months in the damp dungeon at Ingolstadt that gave me the gout. Bring that youth forward.'

Conrad trembled as he was led before the general, though that officer looked, to his boyish eyes, more like a woman than a stalwart fighting-man. His tall body was enveloped in a great, shaggy fur coat right down to the feet, and a white nightcap covered his head. Nothing but the moustache on the pale face indicated the warlike calling of the man who now addressed Conrad.

'How many people have come to live in your town on account of the siege?'

'Oh, they might be somewhere in the sixties,' replied Conrad, carefully conformable to truth.

'Are you starving in Freiberg?'

'My mother and her cat sometimes, nobody else. And then that is all my stepfather's fault, because he will keep the bread cupboard locked up.'

'Do the citizens and soldiers hold together still? Are they not getting down-hearted?'

'Oh, well, at first there were a few squabbles. The Herr Burgomaster had a tiff with the Herr Commandant, but now they are just like brothers; all their quarrels are over, and they are in first-rate spirits.'

'Can you tell me how many men there are left in Freiberg capable of bearing arms?'

'Why, gracious sir,' said Conrad, 'it isn't only the men! Everybody that's got arms and legs does a bit of fighting. And there are nearly sixty thousand of us. Why, only yesterday evening the miller's donkeys helped to spoil your mine.'

The smile which at this sally passed across Torstenson's pale and suffering face gave Conrad a sudden courage; he knelt before the general, and began in a pleading tone, that grew bolder as he warmed with his subject: 'Gracious Field-Marshal, I pray of you, for Christ's sake, to leave off firing at our dear old town. Why should we be the people you are so angry with, and why did you choose us out? The whole wide world lies open before you, and I am sure there are many strong cities in Germany you could easily take if you would just attack them. Do you expect to seize many lumps or bars of silver in Freiberg? They are all gone long ago in this never-ending war, and there's nothing left but rubbish and stones. And I can tell you another thing, noble sir, and that is that you will never conquer the town--no, not if you and all your soldiers were to stand on your heads!'

'Silence, boy!' cried an officer angrily.

'Let the lad chatter,' said Torstenson. 'His talk helps to pass away the time. And pray,' he continued, turning to Conrad, 'who is to blame for your trouble but yourselves? Have I not many times offered the town pardon on favourable terms?'

'Yes,' returned Conrad, hesitating; 'but--with permission--people know what your excellency's pardon is like. Inside the town there, they say they would rather die than accept your excellency's pardon.'

Perhaps it was a fresh twinge of the gout that distorted Torstenson's face. He made a hasty sign to the boy to withdraw, which he was nothing loth to do, although assisted on his way by a cuff or two from the indignant attendants.

The bad temper of great men seldom passes away without producing some effect on those who surround them. The tortures Torstenson suffered found an outlet in giving orders for a general assault on the works of the city, especially on the Peter Gate. The firing of the double and single arquebuses began again, the mortars joined in with their short, sharp roar, and soon the earth shook and the air vibrated with the frightful din.

Conrad had taken refuge in a corner of the hospital wall. When, towards evening, there came a lull in the firing, he could hear, from the breach by the Peter Gate, the jubilant tones of a hymn that touched him to the heart. 'Jesus, my Redeemer, lives,' sounded through the wintry air, chanted by the deep voices of earnest men, and Conrad, in his corner, joined in softly. And the Swedes, too, awed by the holy sounds, stood like statues, facing the singers; the sword rested in its sheath, the bullet in the arquebuse, and the shell in the mortar. In years that were gone, the Swedes themselves used to sing like that as they marched to battle, and now they stood and joined in spirit in the service that Dr. Bartholomew Sperling was holding with the defenders of the threatened breach. But when the prayer was ended, the furies of war raised their blood-red banners again, in mournful contrast to the scene that had just taken place, and the dreadful game that is played with human lives for the stakes began once more.

The whole night through did the firing continue. Early on February 4, 1643, at about six in the morning, the Swedes exploded two mines, one of which laid open the barbican, while the other hurled pieces of woodwork far over the roofs of the houses, shattering the gallery within the barbican, and destroying those who were defending it. In the confusion that arose, the Swedes, a reserve of whom had been held in readiness, immediately seized the barbican, mounted from it to the gate-tower, which was now commanded by their artillery, and placed sharp-shooters in it, who at once opened a galling fire with double arquebuses, hand-grenades, and stones on the occupants of the nearest posts held by the defenders. By way of covering themselves from this fire, the besieged at once constructed a new battery on the upper cistern in the Peter Street. From this they were soon able to open fire upon the new Swedish breastwork on the tower at the Peter Gate, the result being the enemy's speedy and enforced retirement into one of the lower and less exposed rooms of the gate-tower. Yet the Swedes had this time undoubtedly gained an important advantage, and the position of the city was becoming every hour more critical. But, in spite of all, neither courage nor resolution had as yet begun to fail.

[1] See note on page 87.