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237
JINTERNATIONAL.
Last winter at Versailles, during the Prussian siege of Paris, military
funerals were of daily occurrence.
Every afternoon about three o’clock a procession, marching with
measured step timed to the solemn music of the military band at
its head, wound its melancholy way from the chateau through the
tortuous route which led to the city cemetery.
Borne aloft, each upon the shoulders of eight German soldiers, might
be generally seen at that hour from three to a dozen coffins, containing
the bodies of men who had been killed in battle, or who had died in
hospital of wounds or disease, the biers of some of them adorned with
wreaths of immortelles or crowns of laurel.
Escorted on either side by their comrades, or their enemies, with
arms reversed, officers and private soldiers, friend and foe, were carried
indiscriminately to their last resting-place in the soil of the land in the
attack or the defence of the capital of which they had lost their lives.
Reposing on the coffin lids, now the spiked helmet, dark and brass
mounted, of the German infantry, or the burnished morion of the
cuirassier, now the red képi of the Frenchman, indicated the corps or
the nationality of the dead within.
But whether the mournful procession escorted dead Teuton or
Gaul, the French inhabitants of Versailles paid the customary tokens of
respect as it passed : none, man nor woman, ever uttering a disrespect
ful word nor making a disrespectful gesture as they contemplated in
solemn silence the daily cortege accompanying so many of their enemies
to the tomb, while sometimes, in the case of their own countrymen,
the spectators, perhaps friends or acquaintances of the deceased filed
into and swelled the ranks of the mourners.
On these sad occasions it often happened that but a few miles off—at
Bougival, Garches, or Montretout, at Ville d’Avray, Sèvres, or St.
Cloud—the strife was sharply raging, and new victims for the morrow’s
sepulture were being struck down by the shot or shell of cannon or of
mortar, by the bullet of musket or of mitrailleur, the sound of the
distant firing mingling faintly with the mournful music of the band.
If nations must still go to war to settle their real or imaginary dif
ferences, and each do its best to maim and slay, to burn and destroy
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INTERNATIONAL.
the subjects or the property of the other, the horrors of war are some
what mitigated since civilisation has asserted itself, and in the name of
humanity has gained the important point, that belligerents tend each
others sick and wounded with impartial kindness, and bury each
others dead with equal decency.
Soldiers in the field, civilians even in time of war, become hard
ened by the frequent recurrence of such sights as I have described.
Those living for months where the solemn dirge in honour of the dead
indicated each afternoon the hour of the day but rarely indulged in any
reflections on the general evils of war, as, attracted by the music, they
looked from their windows upon the passing pageant. Now and then
speculative thoughts would find utterance upon the childless mother,
the bereaved widow, the fatherless children, the unprotected sister, or
the betrothed maiden, away somewhere in distant Germany or remote
part of France, waiting with anxiety for tidings of the son, the husband,
the father, the brother, or the lover, at that moment being carried to his
grave, while they perhaps were still ignorant of his fate, and only more
anxious than usual, because the accustomed periodical letter was over
due. Would it comfort or console them to be told, at the first moment
of their loss being made known to them, that Fritz or Hans, Adolphe
or Emile had died fighting for his Fatherland ? No ! The abstraction
would be too much for them. More likely far that Emperor and
King who began the strife, or Dictator and Kaiser who persisted in
carrying it on to the bitter end, would be cursed in their inmost hearts
when the sad tidings that the loved one, the bread-winner, had met a
cruel and an untimely death far away from home and those he loved ;
and when the natural grief for his loss would be heightened by the
thought that his dying pillow had not been smoothed, nor his eyes
closed by loving hands, nor his body followed to the grave—which they
would never see—by his friends and kindred, as would have been the
case if he had died peacefully at home. The ceremonial of the funeral
to them would be but an empty mockery ; though by and by, perhaps,
when their sorrow has become less poignant, they may tell with pride
of their relationship to one who bravely met death with his face to the
foe, and point out his name carved in stone or cast in more enduring
brass amongst those of his brother heroes on obelisk or tablet in Platz
or Kirche.
But to the nations engaged in war in the aggregate, the interchange
of the courtesies customary on such occasions does much to soften the
feelings of hatred which each nourishes towards the other; and at
some future time, when the tale is told in Germany and in France of the
tender care bestowed in both countries upon the sick and wounded by
German and by French women—angels of mercy, who have with the
widest exercise of the feelings of humanity tenderly wiped the death
damp from the brow of the dying enemy, and become the repositary
of his last message to those he loved ; when the story is related of the
�INTERNATIONAL.
239
honour so scrupulously paid by both belligerents to the dead of the
other side; who knows but that the graves of those who have been
buried in the soil of either country where they fell in battle or died in
captivity, while serving as a warning to both against lightly appealing
to the arbitrament of the sword, may at the same time create a new
bond of union between them and lead them to forget and to forgive the
past ?
Amidst all the horrors of war it is surely well that the nursing of
the sick and the funeral obsequies of the dead should give occasion
for the performance of those graceful acts of international courtesy
which, like the little conventionalities of society, do so much to soften
the asperities which often arise between individuals as between nations.
While the two countries at war were each day burying each other’s
dead, on December 9, 1870, an opportunity was given to the Germans
at Versailles to pay martial honours to the dead of a nation with which
they were at peace. An Englishman—a Captain of the staff of the
Indian army—died suddenly in one of the hotels. Though he was not
in good health, a zealous desire to learn something more of the art of
war than he was likely to do so long as his country was at peace with
all mankind, led him to employ his leisure time—time which one less
devoted to the duties of his profession would have spent (and justifi
ably so) in quietly staying at home, nursing himself into health—in
visiting the scene of the mightiest conflict of modern times in which
the possession of the capital of France, the second city in the world,
had become the prize for which the two greatest military powers of
Europe fought, and where siege operations on a scale never heretofore
undertaken were to be witnessed. Enfeebled by residence in an
unhealthy climate, the hardships encountered in the tedious winter
journey from England through Belgium and Northern France to
Versailles proved too much for him. Ill when he arrived, after a few
days’ residence, ailing all the while but still hoping and manfully
holding out to the last moment with true British pluck, he at length
gave way and took to his bed, from which he was never again to rise.
Attended assiduously by a devoted friend and brother officer who had
accompanied him from home, and nursed by a kind Englishwoman,
who, having come to Versailles on an errand of mercy to the sick and
wounded soldiers of Germany and France, yet found the strength to
devote the hours set apart for rest to the attendance upon her stricken
countryman, who lay dying in a foreign land, for a few days he lingered,
then the brave spirit took flight and the suffering body was mercifully
permitted to be at rest.
As soon as his death was known, and the time of his funeral fixed,
the German military authorities decided to pay to the body of the
deceased English soldier the honours due to his rank. They did more,
for they sent as an escort a body of cavalry more numerous than as a
captain he was entitled to.
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INTERNATIONAL.
At the hour appointed, a considerable number of people assembled,
and each being supplied with a piece of crape to tie round the left arm,
two women amongst the number—one the Englishwoman before men
tioned, the other an Italian countess well known for her untiring
attention to the wounded in the hospitals—they followed, two and two,
the body as it was borne by German soldiers to the grave, preceded by
a mounted band and escorted by a squadron of cavalry.
Englishmen, countrymen of the deceased, Americans speaking the
same tongue, walked intermingled in the funeral procession along the
snow-covered streets. The French people as the cortege passed along,
when they saw the Union Jack covering the coffin, filed in, and by the
time the grave was reached the assemblage was about equally composed
of English and Americans, Germans and French. Three nationalities
besides his own joined in doing honour to the remains of the British
officer. The beautiful service of the Protestant Episcopal Church was
read over the body most effectively and touchingly by Colonel (since
Major-General) Walker, military attaché at the Prussian Court, the
responses being devoutly and audibly made by the English-speaking
people present, while the Frenchmen and Germans, most of them of
another faith, stood respectfully uncovered during the simple service
in, to them, an unknown tongue.
There was no volley fired over the grave, for it is not the custom in
war-time with the Germans ; but the defenders of Paris unconsciously
gave their tribute of honour to the deceased, for at the very moment
when Colonel Walker uttered the solemn words, ‘ Earth to earth—
ashes to ashes—dust to dust ’—each couplet accompanied by the
peculiarly eerie sound of the earth thrown upon the shell by the
friend of the deceased—Boom—Boom—Boom—three guns from Mont
Valérien distinctly marked the pauses, and the sound of the falling
dust upon the coffin lid was partially drowned in the reverberations of
the cannon.
As we were burying this man out of our sight, perhaps another,
another, and another were sent to their last account by the shots which
seemed as if fired to do him honour.
We English and Americans waited reverently till the grave was
filled up, and then wended our way mournfully to our quarters, in
stinctively, and without a word spoken on the subject, avoiding the
route taken by the band, which according to wont marched homewards
to the sound of livelier music than we wished to hear.
That evening at the usual rendezvous of the English-speaking
visitors to Versailles, our meeting was more quiet, our talk more
subdued than usual, often turning to the subject of the widowed
mother and sorrowing sisters in England of him whose body we had
that day committed to the dust.
W. L. Duff.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
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Title
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International
Creator
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Duff, William L.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 237-240 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (October 1871). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1871]
Identifier
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G5322
Subject
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Literature
Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (International), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Franco-Prussian War
Funerals
Funerals-Military