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

"Yonder is the foe: follow me!" he shouted in a voice of thunder. A tremendous hurrah was his army's reply, as they followed their leader, with the speed and impetuosity of a torrent, to the familiar encounter of the Austrian cannon.

"Why is it," said Dámjánics, as he limped up to the gallows, after seeing seven of his brave comrades executed before his eyes, on the morning of the fatal sixth of October 1849 – "why is it that I, who have ever been foremost in the fight, must here be the last?" That was no empty boast in the dying man's mouth. "To Dámjánics," says Schlesinger, "after Görgey, belongs the glory of all the battles from Hatvan to Komorn. From the commencement of the movement, he was the boldest champion of the national cause." And whatever his staff and his Austrian executioners may have argued from his oratorical incapacity and his ignominious death, neither, assuredly, will prevent his name's preservation on posterity's list of patriot-heroes, even though he should never obtain the monument which it has been predicted that Hungary will one day erect to him, upon the spot where he mounted the scaffold.

Before proceeding to the longest and most remarkable sketch in the volume, we will extract the beginning and end of a humorous paper, written in true soldier's style, entitled From the Memoirs of a Quartermaster.

"I never saw such a man as my lieutenant. It is not because he was my lieutenant that I say so, but a merrier fellow was not to be found in the army. Were I a poet or a scholar, I would make a fine romance out of his adventures; but as I unfortunately lack the learning, I must be content to set down a few odd incidents of our joyous camp-life, just as they occur to my memory. It gives me pleasure to recall these anecdotes of my late master, who was lieutenant in the volunteers. Those who knew him will not have forgotten how gay a wooer he was with women, and how brave a soldier in war.

"They transferred us to a battalion that lay in Siebenburgen, and which was not yet completely equipped. Our principal wants were muskets and cartouch-boxes. Nobody had a greatcoat; and, in another respect, the battalion was quite uniform, for every one went barefoot. My lieutenant often complained to the captain, who had been a Bohemian forester, and afterwards a coffee-roaster in Pesth, but who, when his daughter's husband was promoted to be major of our battalion, was by him appointed captain – to him, I say, the lieutenant repeatedly complained that the poor soldiers were frozen, and should at least be supplied with greatcoats. But all in vain; the superior officers gambled the money sent them by Government for the equipment of the troops; and all my lieutenant could obtain from the ex-coffee-roaster was a bon-mot which Napoleon, he said, had addressed to his soldiers when they complained in Egypt of bad clothing: 'Avec du pain et du fer on peut aller à Chine.'

"The lieutenant made me write these words on one hundred and fifty small slips of paper, pinned these upon his men's shoulders, and said – 'There, my lads, are your greatcoats.' Boots were all that was now wanting. One fine morning we received a hundred and fifty bran-new – blacking-boxes!

"'Engem ucse,' said the lieutenant: ''tis good; instead of boots they send us blacking.' And next day, when the little gray general passed a review, our company marched past with their bare feet blacked and polished, and with spurs drawn in chalk upon their heels. The general laughed at first, and then reprimanded the major. The major laughed too, and scolded the captain. Finally, the captain abused my lieutenant, who abused him in return; but, as the one understood no Hungarian, and the other no German, the dispute led to nothing.

"At last we got ourselves shod, by gloriously ransacking a Wallachian village, and thrusting our feet into the red boots the women had left behind them. Thenceforward our company was known everywhere as 'the regiment of Red Boots.'

"In our first engagement we had not much to do. The enemy fired at us from a distance, whilst we stood still and looked at them. Some of the recruits bobbed their heads aside when they saw the shot coming through the air. 'Don't shake your head, my man,' the lieutenant would say; 'you might chance to knock it against a cannon-ball.' In the second action we took a gun from the enemy. It came up very near us and unlimbered; but, before it had time to fire a shot, my lieutenant made the soldiers believe it was one of our own guns; that the enemy were about to capture it; and could we suffer this? We could not suffer it, and rushed on: a few shots met us; but before we well knew what we did, the gun was in our power. The whole was over in less time than I take to tell it.

"From that day forward nobody made fun of the Red Boots, and soon we were supplied with muskets. Many of these were hardly fit to fire with; but bayonet and butt were always there, wherewith to thrust and strike.

"It was in the dog-days. For three months we had received no pay. At last, to silence my lieutenant's terrible expostulations, they sent us money – fifteen notes of a hundred florins each.

"The salaries of Government officials were paid in fifteen-kreuzer pieces; the money we soldiers wanted, for our daily bread, was sent in hundred-florin notes. Of course, nothing could be easier, in the Wallach hamlets in which we were cantoned, than to get small change for fifteen hundred-florin notes.

"Whilst my lieutenant was grumbling over this, and puzzling his head how to divide these few large notes into many small ones, a courier arrived and brought him a letter.

"The lieutenant read the letter, and laughed out loud. Then he ordered a parade. He was the only officer present. Two captains and a major were constantly rambling about, and seldom saw their battalion, but left everything to my lieutenant. So he ordered the drums to beat for muster; and when the men were assembled, he informed them that their pay had come just in the nick of time. Then he produced the fifteen hundred florins[24 - The notes issued from Kossuth's bank-note press were, of course, worthless when the revolution was suppressed.] and a pair of scissors, made the soldiers file past, and cut off a slip of the notes for each one of them. It was the only way to divide them.

"This done, he came singing and whistling into his quarters, laughed and cut jokes, played a thousand pranks, and at last called to me, and asked if I had a dry cloth at hand, to wipe up something.

"I answered that I had.

"'Go and fetch it, then.' And he continued to laugh and jest, and seemed in most wonderful good humour. 'Make haste,' he shouted after me, as I hurried to fetch the cloth. I felt quite sure he was going to play me some famous trick, he looked so sly and comical when he gave me the order.

"Whilst I sought for a towel, I heard the report of a firearm in the next room. Towel in hand, I threw open the door. The room was full of smoke.

"'What am I to wipe up?' I asked.

"'This blood!' said the lieutenant, who lay upon the ground. The warm heart's-blood flowed from a wound in his breast; in his hand he held a pistol and the letter he had that morning received.

"The letter announced the catastrophe of Vilagos. In two minutes he was dead.

"Thus did my lieutenant make a fool of me, at last.

"Such a merry fellow was my lieutenant."

The various memoirs of the Hungarian war record more than one instance of self-destruction and insanity, amongst the enthusiastic defenders of the Magyar cause, consequent upon Görgey's shameful surrender, and the final downfall of their cherished hopes. As far as the suicide goes, therefore, there is nothing improbable in the conduct of the eccentric lieutenant. Passing over several shorter papers, for the most part clever and spirited, we come to the striking tale, or rather series of scenes, entitled George of St Thomas, which, besides being the most carefully finished of these sketches, includes several of the most terrible and romantic historical incidents of that war. Its construction is favourable to extract, and we propose to translate such portions of it as our limits will allow, and therewith close our notice of the Schlachtfelderblüthen aus Ungarn. The first chapter is headed —

THE FIEND'S FESTIVAL

It was dark night in the town of St Thomas. Not a star was visible. Well was it that the heavens saw not what then occurred upon earth.

Men who had grown gray together in love and friendship, dwelling in the same street, under the very same roof, who were bound to each other by ties of blood and kindred, of gratitude and duty, who were wont to share each other's joys and griefs, began, upon a sudden, as if frantic with infernal inspirations, to plot each other's extermination, and to fill their souls with bloody hatred against those who had never wronged them.

It was St Eustace' day. The Raitzen[25 - The name of Raitzen is synonymous with Serbs. "Arsenius Czernojewic, under Leopold I., transplanted a large colony of Serbs from the ancient Rascia to Hungary. Hence the name Razen, Raczen, Raitzen."The Serbs first aimed the poniard at their German and Magyar neighbours… Isolated scenes of murder, perpetrated by the Serbs against the Magyars and Germans, who inhabit that district, (the Bacska, or country of Bacs, between the Danube and the Theiss,) led the way to a series of sanguinary atrocities, such as our age had hoped never to see repeated. The commencement of hostilities is due to the Sclavo-Wallachian race; old, long-restrained hate, combined with an innate thirst for blood, marked the rising of the South Sclavonian races from the first as one of the bloodiest character, in which murder was both means and end. No revolution of modern times – the great French Revolution not excepted – is blackened with such horrible atrocities as this: the details may be found in the Serbian and Magyar journals; and one would fain have hoped that the accounts on both sides were exaggerated. Unhappily, such a hope is illusory; nor can the historian indulge it without falsifying the truth. Deeds have been perpetrated which call to mind the Hurons and Makis of the American forests. Like them, the Serbs were masters in the art of torture and murder; like them, they made their unhappy victims previously undergo all the dreadful steps of torment, prolonging the transition from life to death with a refinement of cruelty; like them, they vaunted the deeds of horror, and honoured their executioners as heroes… Such unheard-of atrocities inevitably called forth retaliation. Magyars and Germans became savages among savages." – Schlesinger, Pulsky's edition, i. 22-24.] assembled in their church, to worship God, as they said. But no words of God were there, nor solemn organ-notes; wild voices announced approaching horrors, and the sainted roof resounded with strains ominous of strife.

The town's-people were tranquil. Those amongst them who noticed that their neighbours' windows were lighted up, and who saw gloomy faces hurrying to the church, said to themselves, "To-day the Raitzen hold high festival;" and thought no more of it, but went their ways to bed. Towards midnight the alarm-bell sounded, the doors of the temple opened, and the nocturnal revel began.

With wild howl the excited mob burst into the houses of their sleeping neighbours. It was as though they had some ancient and inveterate grudge to avenge, so fierce and bitter was the fury with which they murdered all whose windows showed no lights – the token the Raitzen had adopted, lest by error they should assail each other's dwellings.

In two hours the Magyar population of the town was exterminated, with the exception of a scanty few who escaped in carts and carriages. These, however, were pursued; and when the uproar in the town, the sounds of strife and lamentation, and the clang of bells, were hushed, cries of agony and despair were still heard issuing at intervals from the adjacent country, as vehicles, stuck fast in the treacherous swamps, were overtaken, and the luckless fugitives ruthlessly butchered. At last these heart-rending sounds also ceased. Voices of complaint were no longer audible, but in their stead, in more than one quarter of the illuminated town, were heard music, and dancing, and merriment.

It was long past midnight when a cart drove through the streets of St Thomas. In it sat a man wrapped in his cloak, marvelling greatly at the lights in the houses, and the sounds of festivity and joy. At his own house-door he stopped his horse. To his great surprise, his dwelling also was lighted up, and within were sounds of music, a hum of voices, and noise of dancing feet. Astounded and anxious, he stepped silently to a window, and through it he beheld a crowd of well-known faces. The company, flushed with wine and excitement, sang and shouted, and drank out of his glasses, and danced madly round the room. They were all old acquaintances, and inhabitants of the town.

Ignorant of the events of the night, the man thought he was dreaming.

Presently his attention was attracted by the licentious garb and demeanour of a woman, who circulated amongst the guests with loud laugh and libertine gestures, sharing in and stimulating the orgies. At first, he could not discern who this woman was. Then he recognised her. It was his own wife.

"Hold!" he shouted, and strode into the room where these saturnalia were in progress. He knew not what to do or say; it were hard to find a word which should express the rage that possessed him.

"Hold!" he thundered out, every fibre quivering with fury, "what do ye here?"

The guests stood aghast at that apparition of wrath. The boldest started at sight of the man, as he stood amongst them, terrible and deadly pale. For a while none dared approach him. He went up to his wife, a dark-haired, black-eyed, red-cheeked wanton, who stood as if turned to stone. He fixed his eyes upon hers with a deadly gaze.

"On your knees!"

The woman stirred not.

"On your knees, wretch!" vociferated the husband, and struck her in the face, so that she fell to the ground.

"Hold, dog!" was shouted on all sides. The Raitzen rushed forward, and the man was seized by twenty hands. He struggled against them, grasped the throat of one, and relaxed not his clutch, even when thrown down and trampled under foot, until he had choked his adversary to death. They bound his hands and thrust him into a corner. The Raitzen formed a circle about him.

"What would ye of me?" he asked, the blood flowing from his mouth.

"What would we? Look around you. See you not that all here are Raitzen?" replied a tall dark-browed Serb, scowling scornfully and cruelly at the sufferer.

"And I a Magyar. What then?"

"Ask thy neighbours. Hast thou not heard that to-day is our festival? The festival of the extermination of the Magyars. You are one: the last in the town. All the others are dead. As the last, you shall choose the manner of your death."

"So you are the executioner, Basil?"

"I? I am the chosen of my people."

With indescribable loathing, the Magyar spat in his face.

"Scoundrel!" yelled the insulted man, "for this you shall weep tears of blood."

"Weep! I? – who ever saw me weep? You may slay me, you may torture me, or tear me limb from limb. There are enough of you to do it. But weep you shall not see me, though you burst for impotent rage."