“Enough! enough!” cried the girls.
“The censorship should not allow the publication of things of that sort,” said my father. “It might destroy a man’s love for the profession of a soldier.”
“And especially the love for war, which would be a pity,” I murmured half aloud.
“As a general rule,” he went on, “about these episodes of flight, the people who have been present at them should observe a decorous silence, for it is surely no honour to have borne a part at a general ‘Sauve qui peut.’ The fellow who, by shouting ‘Save yourselves,’ gives the signal for scampering should be shot down on the spot. One coward raises the shout, and a thousand brave men are demoralised thereby and obliged to run with him.”
“Exactly so,” replied Frederick, “just as when one brave man shouts ‘Forward’ a thousand cowards are obliged to rush on, and thus are really animated by a merely momentary courage. Men cannot in general be divided so sharply into courageous and cowards, but everyone has his moments of more or less courage and those of more or less cowardice. And especially when one is dealing with masses of men each individual is dependent on the condition of his comrades. We are gregarious animals, and are under the domination of gregarious feelings. Where one sheep leaps over the others leap after him, where one man rushes on shouting ‘Hurrah’ the others shout and rush after him, and where one dashes down his musket into the corn in order to run away the others run after him. In the one case ‘our brave troops’ get praised, in the other their proceedings are passed over in silence, yet they are all the same persons. Yes, they are the very same men who, obeying in each case a common impulse, behave and feel at one time courageously, at another cowardly. Bravery and fear are to be regarded, not as fixed qualities, but rather as states of the spirits, just like joy and grief. I, during my first campaign, was once involved in the whirl of one of these panic flights. In the official account of the État-major, it is true, the affair was passed over in a few words as an ‘orderly retreat’; but in fact it was a thorough rout. They rushed on, madly raging in indescribable confusion; arms, knapsacks, shakos, and cloaks were cast away; no word of command could be heard; panting, shrieking, hounded on by despair, the disbanded battalion streamed on, with the enemy pursuing and firing after them. That is one of the many gruesome phases of war—the most gruesome, when the two adversaries figure no longer as warriors but as hunter and prey. Thence arises in the hunter the most cruel lust of blood; in the prey the most bitter fear of death. The pursued, hunted and spurred by fear, get into a kind of delirium, all the feelings and sentiments in which they have been educated, and which animate a man as he is rushing into battle, such as love of country, ambition, thirst for noble deeds—all these are lost to the fugitive. He is filled with one impulse only, in its greatest force, liberated from all restraint, and that the most vehement which can assume the mastery of a living being—the impulse of self-preservation: and this, as danger comes nearer, rises to the highest paroxysm of terror.”
Frederick’s recovery progressed surely. The feverish outer world, too, seemed to come nearer to recovery. The word “Peace” was always being spoken more frequently and always louder. The advance of the Prussians, who found no longer any opposition on the way, and who were quietly drawing on towards Vienna, by way of Brünn, the keys of which were delivered by the burgomaster to King William, this advance was more in the nature of a military promenade than an operation of war, and on July 26 a regular suspension of arms at Nikolsburg was ended by the preliminaries of peace.
My father had a great delight in the reception of the news of Admiral Tegethoff’s victory at Lyssa. Italian ships blown into the air, the Affundatore destroyed, what a satisfaction! I could not with perfect honesty take my share in his joy. Speaking generally, I could not understand why, since Venice had already been surrendered, these naval actions should be fought at all. So much, however, is certain, that there broke out over this event the most lively shout of joy, not from my father only, but from all the Viennese papers. The fame of a victory in war is a thing which has been swollen up to such a size through the traditions of a thousand years, that even from the mere news of one some share of pride is spread over the whole population. If anywhere a general of your country has beaten a general of
