orders hurled us on the foeIn vengeance for thy death.
Thou, Henry,15 wert a soldier true,
Thou foughtest royally!
From deed to deed our glances flew,
Thou lion-youth, with thee!
A Prussian heart with valor quick,
Right Christian was his mood:
Red grew his sword, and flowing thick
His steps with Pandourt16-blood.
Full seven earth-works did we clear,
The bear-skins broke and fled;
Then, Frederic, went thy grenadier
High over heaps of dead:
Remembered, in the murderous fight,
God, Fatherland, and thee,—
Turned, from the deep and smoky night,
His Frederic to see,
And trembled,—with a flush of fear
His visage mounted high;
He trembled, not that death was near,
But lest thou, too, shouldst die:
Despised the balls like scattered seed,
The cannon's thunder-tone,
Fought fiercely, did a hero's deed,
Till all thy foes had flown.
Now thanks he God for all His might,
And sings, Victoria!
And all the blood from out this fight
Flows to Theresia.
And if she will not stay the plague,
Nor peace to thee concede,
Storm with us, Frederic, first her Prague,
Then, to Vienna lead!
The love which the soldiers had for Frederic survived in the army after all the veterans of his wars had passed away. It is well preserved in this camp-song:—
Here stump we round upon our crutches, round our Father's grave we go, And from our eyelids down our grizzled beards the bitter tears will flow.
'T was long ago, with Frederic living, that we
got our lawful gains:
A meagre ration now they serve us,—life's no
longer worth the pains.
Here stump we round, deserted orphans, and
with tears each other see,—
Are waiting for our marching orders hence,
to be again with thee.
Yes, Father, only could we buy thee, with our
blood, by Heaven, yes,—
We Invalides, forlorn detachment, straight
through death would storming press!
When the German princes issued to their subjects unlimited orders for Constitutions, to be filled up and presented after the domination of Napoleon was destroyed, all classes hastened, fervid with hope and anti-Gallic feeling, to offer their best men for the War of Liberation. Then the poets took again their rhythm from an air vibrating with the cannon's pulse. There was Germanic unity for a while, fed upon expectation and the smoke of successful fields. Most of the songs of this period have been already translated. Ruckert, in a series of verses which he called "Sonnets in Armor," gave a fine scholarly expression to the popular desires. Here is his exultation over the Battle of Leipsic:—
Can there no song
Roar with a might
Loud as the fight
Leipsic's region along?
Three days and three nights,
No moment of rest,
And not for a jest,
Went thundering the fights.
Three days and three nights
Leipsic Fair kept: Frenchmen who pleasured
There with an iron yardstick were measured,
Bringing the reckoning with them to rights.
Three days and all night
A battue of larks the Leipsicker make;
Every haul a hundred he takes,
A thousand each flight.
Ha! it is good,
Now that the Russian can boast no longer
He alone of us is stronger
To slake his steppes with hostile blood.
Not in the frosty North alone,
But here in Meissen,
Here at Leipsic on the Pleissen,
Can the French be overthrown.
Shallow Pleissen deep is flowing;
Plains upheaving,
The dead receiving,
Seem to mountains for us growing.
They will be our mountains never,
But this fame
Shall be our claim
On the rolls of earth forever.
What all this amounted to, when the German people began to send in their constitutional cartes-blanches, is nicely taken off by Hoffman von Fallersleben, in this mock war-song, published in 1842:—
All sing.
Hark to the beating drum!
See how the people come!
Flag in the van!
We follow, man for man.
Rouse, rouse
From earth and house!
Ye women and children, good night!
Forth we hasten, we hasten to the fight,
With God for our King and Fatherland.
A night-patrol of 1813 sings.
O God! and why, and why,
For princes' whim, renown, and might,
To the fight?
For court-flies and other crows,
To blows?
For the nonage of our folk,
Into smoke?
For must-war-meal and class-tax,
To thwacks?
For privilege and censordom—
Hum—
Into battle without winking?
But—I was thinking—
All sing.
Hark to the heating drum!
See how the people come!
Flag in the van!
We follow, man for man:
In battle's roar
The time is o'er
To ask for reasons,—hear, the drum
Again
The King's brother.
A corps of foot-soldiers in the Austrian service, eventually incorporated in the army. They were composed of Servians, Croats, etc., inhabitants of the military frontier, and were named originally from the village of Pandúr in Lower Hungary, where probably the first recruits were gathered.
