Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851

The General burst into a hearty laugh, and told his officers of the hussar's kind intentions towards them. The laughter became general. The officers crowded round the old soldier, clapped him on the shoulder, and made much of him.

"Well, Miska, you will take service with us, eh?" said the General, curious to hear his answer.

"There are no hussar regiments here!" replied the old soldier, twisting his mustaches.

"What matter? You shall be a cuirassier. We'll make a serjeant of you."

"Many thanks. Can't stand it. Should have been serjeant long ago, if I could write."

"What do you think of doing then? Eat your ration in idleness?"

"Not so – by your honour's favour – but make a run for it."

The honest answer pleased the General. The hussar saw that it did.

"A whole regiment of those gaiter-legged fellows could not keep me," he added.

One of the officers asked him angrily why he wished to go back. Those were mistaken, if any, who expected a rude answer from the hussar.

"Yonder is my regiment," he replied, again twirling his mustache. "A true soldier bides by his colours."

To this nothing could be objected.

"Well, Miska, that you may not desert from us, I let you go free."

"Thanks, Colonel." Once more the hand was raised to the schako's place.

"You can go."

The hussar lingered, rubbed his nose, and frowned.

"Colonel – you surely do not intend me to pass through the whole camp in hussar uniform, and on foot. I should die of shame. Let them give me back my horse."

"Your horse? That is the Emperor's property, my son."

"I crave your pardon, Colonel! I reared the horse myself from a colt. I have ridden it for ten years, and it comes at my whistle. By every right it belongs to me. I would rather a bullet hit me than lose the good brute."

"Well, take it."

Even now the hussar did not seem satisfied.

"Colonel! can I go back to my regiment in this scandalous manner? – without my sabre? I shall have to run the gauntlet; they will think I have sold it for drink."

"It shall be restored to you." The General made sign to his orderly; the hussar saluted, and turned to depart. But at the door he once more paused, and gazed pathetically at his former chief.

"Colonel!" he said, in the most insinuating tone he could command.

"Well?"

"Colonel – come over to us!"

And with a bound he was out of the room, feeling well enough that he had said something extraordinarily stupid, but which he could not help saying though it had cost him his head.

When horse and sabre were restored to him, one of the General's grooms, a mischievous fellow, trod on the hussar's spur, breaking the rowel, and then sprang aside laughing.

The old hussar shook his clenched fist menacingly.

"Wait a little, Italian!" he cried, "I will find you yet." Then saluting the General's window with his sabre, he galloped away.

It was thought that a tear glistened in the General's eye, as he turned to his staff, and said —

"Such soldiers should we have!"

Such were the soldiers with whom Görgey drove before him the best generals of Austria; with whom he triumphed in that brilliant conflict, of fourteen days' duration, which terminated in the capture of Pesth, the relief of Komorn, and the complete retreat of the Imperialists.[21 - War in Hungary, i. 206-7.] These were the men who rode up to the very mouths of the Austrian cannon at Isazeg,[22 - Ibid. ii. 20.] and who followed, in twenty conflicts, the well-known war-cry of the gigantic Serb, Dámjánics. Of this last-named general (of whom Schlesinger has given many interesting details,) we find an interesting and authentic anecdote in Sajó's vigorous military sketch, entitled The Two Brides.

Dámjánics and his troops encamped in the night at two leagues from Szolnok. In order of battle, and without watch-fires, they there awaited the signal to advance. The signal was the sound of cannon, fired beyond the Theiss.

The Hungarian General had already fought many battles, won many victories, taken many standards. When he began a battle, he stationed himself in front of his army, looked where the foe was strongest, shouted "Mir nach!"[23 - "Follow me!"] and rushed forward, overthrowing and crushing all before him. It was his way.

There were persons who did not like this way, and who wearied him with assurances that, to be a renowned general, it is not enough to win battles; one must also leave permanent evidence of merit, to be handed down to future generations; one must make speeches, issue proclamations, and so forth.

So it came to pass, when he marched away from the Banat, that he addressed to the hostile party in the province a proclamation which has become celebrated. It was word for word as follows: —

"Ye dogs!

"I depart. But I shall come back again.

"If in the interval you dare to stir, I will extirpate you from the face of the earth; and then, that the seed of the Serbs may be extinct, I, the last of them, will shoot myself."

The success of this first attempt so encouraged the General, that, after much persuasion, he gave a solemn promise to make a speech to his army when next they went into action.

On the eve of the battle, Dámjánics felt his spirits extraordinarily low.

"Strange," thought he to himself, "never yet have I trembled at the approach of a fight, but now I feel as if I had no stomach for it." And he sought within himself the cause of this unaccustomed mood, but all in vain.

Presently, however, one of his staff-officers came to remind him that, before the next day's battle, they expected to hear the speech he had promised them.

"Devil take it!" cried the General. "That was what made me shake in my boots. But never fear, it shall be done – I will venture it – the speech you shall have."

He had drawn out his plan of battle in a quarter of an hour. But morning dawned whilst he was still hammering at his speech.

The troops stood in order of battle. Dámjánics rode along the front of the line. Everybody knew he was to make a speech, and what a cruel task it was to him.

Before the colours of the ninth battalion he halted, raised his hat and spoke:

"Comrades!"

At that instant the artillery beyond the Theiss boomed out its first discharge. The General's face glowed, he forgot phrases and oration, tore his sabre from the scabbard, pressed his schako down upon his brow, and —