A Book of Golden Deeds

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> A Book of Golden Deeds

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His intentions had not become known, and the English Mediterranean fleet
was watching the course of this great armament. Sir Horatio Nelson was
in pursuit, with the English vessels, and wrote to the First Lord of the
Admiralty: 'Be they bound to the Antipodes, your lordship may rely that
I will not lose a moment in bringing them to action.'

Nelson had, however, not ships enough to be detached to reconnoitre, and
he actually overpassed the French, whom he guessed to be on the way to
Egypt; he arrived at the port of Alexandria on the 28th of June, and saw
its blue waters and flat coast lying still in their sunny torpor, as if
no enemy were on the seas. Back he went to Syracuse, but could learn no
more there; he obtained provisions with some difficulty, and then, in
great anxiety, sailed for Greece; where at last, on the 28th of July, he
learnt that the French fleet had been seen from Candia, steering to the
southeast, and about four weeks since. In fact, it had actually passed
by him in a thick haze, which concealed each fleet from the other, and
had arrived at Alexandria on the 1st of July, three days after he had
left it!

Every sail was set for the south, and at four o'clock in the afternoon
of the 1st of August a very different sight was seen in Aboukir Bay, so
solitary a month ago. It was crowded with shipping. Great castle-like
men-of-war rose with all their proud calm dignity out of the water,
their dark port-holes opening in the white bands on their sides, and the
tricolored flag floating as their ensign. There were thirteen ships of
the line and four frigates, and, of these, three were 80-gun ships, and
one, towering high above the rest, with her three decks, was L'Orient,
of 120 guns. Look well at her, for there stands the hero for whose sake
we have chose this and no other of Nelson's glorious fights to place
among the setting of our Golden Deeds. There he is, a little cadet de
vaisseau, as the French call a midshipman, only ten years old, with a
heart swelling between awe and exultation at the prospect of his first
battle; but, fearless and glad, for is he not the son of the brave
Casabianca, the flag-captain? And is not this Admiral Brueys' own ship,
looking down in scorn on the fourteen little English ships, not one
carrying more than 74 guns, and one only 50?

Why Napoleon had kept the fleet there was never known. In his usual mean
way of disavowing whatever turned out ill, he laid the blame upon
Admiral Brueys; but, though dead men could not tell tales, his papers
made it plain that the ships had remained in obedience to commands,
though they had not been able to enter the harbour of Alexandria. Large
rewards had been offered to any pilot who would take them in, but none
could be found who would venture to steer into that port a vessel
drawing more than twenty feet of water. They had, therefore, remained at
anchor outside, in Aboukir Bay, drawn up in a curve along the deepest of
the water, with no room to pass them at either end, so that the
commissary of the fleet reported that they could bid defiance to a force
more than double their number. The admiral believed that Nelson had not
ventured to attack him when they had passed by one another a month
before, and when the English fleet was signaled, he still supposed that
it was too late in the day for an attack to be made.

Nelson had, however, no sooner learnt that the French were in sight than
he signaled from his ship, the Vanguard, that preparations for battle
should be made, and in the meantime summoned up his captains to receive
his orders during a hurried meal. He explained that, where there was
room for a large French ship to swing, there was room for a small
English one to anchor, and, therefore, he designed to bring his ships up
to the outer part of the French line, and station them close below their
adversary; a plan that he said Lord Hood had once designed, though he
had not carried it out.

Captain Berry was delighted, and exclaimed, 'If we succeed, what will
the world say?'

'There is no if in the case,' returned Nelson, 'that we shall succeed is
certain. Who may live to tell the tale is a very different question.'

And when they rose and parted, he said, 'before this time to-morrow I
shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey.'

In the fleet went, through a fierce storm of shot and shell from a
French battery in an island in advance. Nelson's own ship, the Vanguard,
was the first to anchor within half-pistol-shot of the third French
ship, the Spartiate. The Vanguard had six colours flying, in any case
any should be shot away; and such was the fire that was directed on her,
that in a few minutes every man at the six guns in her forepart was
killed or wounded, and this happened three times. Nelson himself
received a wound in the head, which was thought at first to be mortal,
but which proved but slight. He would not allow the surgeon to leave the
sailors to attend to him till it came to his turn.

Meantime his ships were doing their work gloriously. The Bellerophon
was, indeed, overpowered by L'Orient, 200 of her crew killed, and all
her masts and cables shot away, so that she drifted away as night came
on; but the Swiftsure came up in her place, and the Alexander and
Leander both poured in their shot. Admiral Brueys received three wounds,
but would not quit his post, and at length a fourth shot almost cut him
in two. He desired not to be carried below, but that he might die on
deck.

About nine o'clock the ship took fire, and blazed up with fearful
brightness, lighting up the whole bay, and showing five French ships
with their colours hauled down, the others still fighting on. Nelson
himself rose and came on deck when this fearful glow came shining from
sea and sky into his cabin; and gave orders that the English boars
should immediately be put off for L'Orient, to save as many lives as
possible.

The English sailors rowed up to the burning ship which they had lately
been attacking. The French officers listened to the offer of safety, and
called to the little favorite of the ship, the captain's son, to come
with them. 'No,' said the brave child, 'he was where his father had
stationed him, and bidden him not to move save at his call.' They told
him his father's voice would never call him again, for he lay senseless
and mortally wounded on the deck, and that the ship must blow up. 'No,'
said the brave child, 'he must obey his father.' The moment allowed no
delaythe boat put off. The flames showed all that passed in a quivering
flare more intense than daylight, and the little fellow was then seen on
the deck, leaning over the prostrate figure, and presently tying it to
one of the spars of the shivered masts.

Just then a thundering explosion shook down to the very hold every ship
in the harbour, and burning fragments of L'Orient came falling far and
wide, plashing heavily into the water, in the dead, awful stillness that
followed the fearful sound. English boats were plying busily about,
picking up those who had leapt overboard in time. Some were dragged in
through the lower portholes of the English ships, and about seventy were
saved altogether. For one moment a boat's crew had a sight of a helpless
figure bound to a spar, and guided by a little childish swimmer, who
must have gone overboard with his precious freight just before the
explosion. They rowed after the brave little fellow, earnestly desiring
to save him; but in darkness, in smoke, in lurid uncertain light, amid
hosts of drowning wretches, they lost sight of him again.

The boy, oh where was he!
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea;
With mast and helm, and pennant fair
That well had borne their part:
But the noblest thing that perished there
Was that young faithful heart!

By sunrise the victory was complete. Nay, as Nelson said, 'It was not a
victory, but a conquest.' Only four French ships escaped, and Napoleon
and his army were cut off from home. These are the glories of our navy,
gained by men with hearts as true and obedient as that of the brave
child they had tried in vain to save. Yet still, while giving the full
meed of thankful, sympathetic honor to our noble sailors, we cannot but
feel that the Golden Deed of Aboukir Bay fell to--

'That young faithful heart.'

THE SOLDIERS IN THE SNOW

1672

Few generals had ever been more loved by their soldiers than the great
Viscount de Turenne, who was Marshal of France in the time of Louis XIV.
Troops are always proud of a leader who wins victories; but Turenne was
far more loved for his generous kindness than for his successes. If he
gained a battle, he always wrote in his despatches, 'We succeeded,' so
as to give the credit to the rest of the army; but if he were defeated,
he wrote, 'I lost,' so as to take all the blame upon himself. He always
shared as much as possible in every hardship suffered by his men, and
they trusted him entirely. In the year 1672, Turenne and his army were
sent to make war upon the Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg, in
Northern Germany. It was in the depth of winter, and the marches through
the heavy roads were very trying and wearisome; but the soldiers endured
all cheerfully for his sake. Once when they were wading though a deep
morass, some of the younger soldiers complained; but the elder ones
answered, 'Depend upon it, Turenne is more concerned than we are. At
this moment he is thinking how to deliver us. He watches for us while we
sleep. He is our father. It is plain that you are but young.'

Another night, when he was going the round of the camp, he overheard
some of the younger men murmuring at the discomforts of the march; when
an old soldier, newly recovered from a severe wound, said: 'You do not
know our father. He would not have made us go through such fatigue,
unless he had some great end in view, which we cannot yet make out.'
Turenne always declared that nothing had ever given him more pleasure
than this conversation.

There was a severe sickness among the troops, and he went about among
the sufferers, comforting them, and seeing that their wants were
supplied. When he passed by, the soldiers came out of their tents to
look at him, and say, 'Our father is in good health: we have nothing to
fear.'

The army had to enter the principality of Halberstadt, the way to which
lay over ridges of high hills with narrow defiles between them.
Considerable time was required for the whole of the troops to march
through a single narrow outlet; and one very cold day, when such a
passage was taking place, the Marshal, quite spent with fatigue, sat
down under a bush to wait till all had marched by, and fell asleep. When
he awoke, it was snowing fast; but he found himself under a sort of tent
made of soldiers' cloaks, hung up upon the branches of trees planted in
the ground, and round it were standing, in the cold and snow, all
unsheltered, a party of soldiers. Turenne called out to them, to ask
what they were doing there. 'We are taking care of our father,' they
said; 'that is our chief concern.' The general, to keep up discipline,
seems to have scolded them a little for straggling from their regiment;
but he was much affected and gratified by this sight of their hearty
love for him.

Still greater and more devoted love was shown by some German soldiers in
the terrible winter of 1812. It was when the Emperor Napoleon I. had
made his vain attempt to conquer Russia, and had been prevented from
spending the winter at Moscow by the great fire that consumed all the
city. He was obliged to retreat through the snow, with the Russian army
pursuing him, and his miserable troops suffering horrors beyond all
imagination. Among them were many Italians, Poles, and Germans, whom he
had obliged to become his allies; and the 'Golden Deed' of ten of these
German soldiers, the last remnant of those led from Hesse Darmstadt by
their gallant young Prince Emilius, is best told in Lord Houghton's
verses:--

'From Hessen Darmstadt every step to Moskwa's blazing banks,
Was Prince Emilius found in flight before the foremost ranks;
And when upon the icy waste that host was backward cast,
On Beresina's bloody bridge his banner waved the last.

'His valor shed victorious grace on all that dread retreat--
That path across the wildering snow, athwart the blinding sleet;
And every follower of his sword could all endure and dare,
Becoming warriors, strong in hope, or stronger in despair.
'Now, day and dark, along the storm the demon Cossacks sweep--
The hungriest must not look for food, the weariest must not sleep.
No rest but death for horse or man, whichever first shall tire;
They see the flames destroy, but ne'er may feel the saving fire.
'Thus never closed the bitter night, nor rose the salvage morn,
But from the gallant company some noble part was shorn;
And, sick at heart, the Prince resolved to keep his purposed way
With steadfast forward looks, nor count the losses of the day.

'At length beside a black, burnt hut, an island of the snow,
Each head in frigid torpor bent toward the saddle bow;
They paused, and of that sturdy troop--that thousand banded men--
At one unmeditated glance he numbered only ten!

'Of all that high triumphant life that left his German home--
Of all those hearts that beat beloved, or looked for love to come--
This piteous remnant, hardly saved, his spirit overcame,
While memory raised each friendly face, recalled an ancient name.

'These were his words, serene and firm, 'Dear brothers, it is best
That here, with perfect trust in Heaven, we give our bodies rest;
If we have borne, like faithful men, our part of toil and pain,
Where'er we wake, for Christ's good sake, we shall not sleep in vain.'

'Some uttered, others looked assent--they had no heart to speak;
Dumb hands were pressed, the pallid lip approached the callous cheek.
They laid them side by side; and death to him at last did seem
To come attired in mazy robe of variegated dream.

'Once more he floated on the breast of old familiar Rhine,
His mother's and one other smile above him seemed to shine;
A blessed dew of healing fell on every aching limb;
Till the stream broadened, and the air thickened, and all was dim.

'Nature has bent to other laws if that tremendous night
Passed o'er his frame, exposed and worn, and left no deadly blight;
Then wonder not that when, refresh'd and warm, he woke at last,
There lay a boundless gulf of thought between him and the past.

'Soon raising his astonished head, he found himself alone,
Sheltered beneath a genial heap of vestments not his own;
The light increased, the solemn truth revealing more and more,
The soldiers' corses, self-despoiled, closed up the narrow door.

'That every hour, fulfilling good, miraculous succor came,
And Prince Emilius lived to give this worthy deed to fame.
O brave fidelity in death! O strength of loving will!
These are the holy balsam drops that woeful wars distil.'

GUNPOWDER PERILS

1700

The wild history of Ireland contains many a frightful tale, but also
many an action of the noblest order; and the short sketch given by Maria
Edgeworth of her ancestry, presents such a chequerwork of the gold and
the lead that it is almost impossible to separate them.

At the time of the great Irish rebellion of 1641 the head of the
Edgeworth family had left his English wife and her infant son at his
castle of Cranallagh in county Longford, thinking them safe there while
he joined the royal forces under the Earl of Ormond. In his absence,
however, the rebels attacked the castle at night, set fire to it, and
dragged the lady out absolutely naked. She hid herself under a furze
bush, and succeeded in escaping and reaching Dublin, whence she made her
way to her father's house in Derbyshire. Her little son was found by the
rebels lying in his cradle, and one of them actually seized the child by
the leg and was about to dash out his brains against the wall; but a
servant named Bryan Ferral, pretending to be even more ferocious, vowed
that a sudden death was too good for the little heretic, and that he
should be plunged up to the throat in a bog-hole and left for the crows
to pick out his eyes. He actually did place the poor child in the bog ,
but only to save his life; he returned as soon as he could elude his
comrades, put the boy into a pannier below eggs and chickens, and thus
carried him straight though the rebel camp to his mother at Dublin.
Strange to say, these rebels, who thought being dashed against the wall
too good a fate for the infant, extinguished the flames of the castle
out of reverence for the picture of his grandmother, who had been a
Roman Catholic, and was painted on a panel with a cross on her bosom and
a rosary in her hand.

John Edgeworth, the boy thus saved, married very young, and went with
his wife to see London after the Restoration. To pay their expenses they
mortgaged an estate and put the money in a stocking, which they kept on
the top of the bed; and when that store was used up, the young man
actually sold a house in Dublin to buy a high-crowned hat and feathers.
Still, reckless and improvident as they were, there was sound principle
within them, and though they were great favorites, and Charles II.
insisted on knighting the husband, their glimpse of the real evils and
temptations of his Court sufficed them, and in the full tide of flattery
and admiration the lady begged to return home, nor did she ever go back
to Court again.

Her home was at Castle Lissard, in full view of which was a hillock
called Fairymount, or Firmont, from being supposed to be the haunt of
fairies. Lights, noises, and singing at night, clearly discerned from
the castle, caused much terror to Lady Edgeworth, though her descendants
affirm that they were fairies of the same genus as those who beset Sir
John Falstaff at Hearne's oak, and intended to frighten her into leaving
the place. However, though her nerves might be disturbed, her spirit was
not to be daunted; and, fairies or no fairies, she held her ground at
Castle Lissard, and there showed what manner of woman she was in a
veritable and most fearful peril.

On some alarm which caused the gentlemen of the family to take down
their guns, she went to a dark loft at the top of the house to fetch
some powder from a barrel that was there kept in store, taking a young
maid-servant to carry the candle; which, as might be expected in an
Irish household of the seventeenth century, was devoid of any
candlestick. After taking the needful amount of gunpowder, Lady
Edgeworth locked the door, and was halfway downstairs when she missed
the candle, and asking the girl what she had done with it, received the
cool answer that 'she had left it sticking in the barrel of black salt'.
Lady Edgeworth bade her stand still, turned round, went back alone to
the loft where the tallow candle stood guttering and flaring planted in
the middle of the gunpowder, resolutely put an untrembling hand beneath
it, took it out so steadily that no spark fell, carried it down, and
when she came to the bottom of the stairs dropped on her knees, and
broke forth in a thanksgiving aloud for the safety of the household in
this frightful peril. This high-spirited lady lived to be ninety years
old, and left a numerous family. One grandson was the Abbe Edgeworth,
known in France as De Firmont, such being the alteration of Fairymount
on French lips. It was he who, at the peril of his own life, attended
Louis XVI. to the guillotine, and thus connected his name so closely
with the royal cause that when his cousin Richard Lovell Edgeworth, of
Edgeworths-town, visited France several years after, the presence of a
person so called was deemed perilous to the rising power of Napoleon.
This latter Mr. Edgeworth was the father of Maria, whose works we hope
are well known to our young readers.

The good Chevalier Bayard was wont to mourn over the introduction of
firearms, as destructive of chivalry; and certainly the steel-clad
knight, with barbed steed, and sword and lance, has disappeared from the
battle-field; but his most essential qualities, truth, honor,
faithfulness, mercy, and self-devotion, have not disappeared with him,
nor can they as long as Christian men and women bear in mind that
'greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his
friend'.

And that terrible compound, gunpowder, has been the occasion of many
another daring deed, requiring desperate resolution, to save others at
the expense of a death perhaps more frightful to the imagination than
any other. Listen to a story of the King's birthday in Jersey 'sixty
years since'--in 1804, when that 4th of June that Eton boys delight in,
was already in the forty-fourth year of its observance in honor of the
then reigning monarch, George III.

All the forts in the island had done due honor to the birthday of His
Majesty, who was then just recovered from an attack of insanity. In each
the guns at noon-day thundered out their royal salute, the flashes had
answered one another, and the smoke had wreathed itself away over the
blue sea of Jersey. The new fort on the hill just above the town of St.
Heliers had contributed its share to the loyal thunders, and then it was
shut up, and the keys carried away by Captain Salmon, the artillery
officer on guard there, locking up therein 209 barrels of gunpowder,
with a large supply of bombshells, and every kind of ammunition such as
might well be needed in the Channel islands the year before Lord Nelson
had freed England from the chance of finding the whole French army on
our coast in the flat-bottomed boats that were waiting at Boulogne for
the dark night that never came.

At six o'clock in the evening, Captain Salmon went to dine with the
other officers in St. Heliers and to drink the King's health, when the
soldiers on guard beheld a cloud of smoke curling out at the air-hole at
the end of the magazine. Shouting 'fire', they ran away to avoid an
explosion that would have shattered them to pieces, and might perhaps
endanger the entire town of St. Heliers. Happily their shout was heard
by a man of different mould. Lieutenant Lys, the signal officer, was in
the watch-house on the hill, and coming out he saw the smoke, and
perceived the danger. Two brothers, named Thomas and Edward Touzel,
carpenters, and the sons of an old widow, had come up to take down a
flagstaff that had been raised in honor of the day, and Mr. Lys ordered
them to hasten to the town to inform the commander-in-chief, and get the
keys from Captain Salmon.

Thomas went, and endeavored to persuade his brother to accompany him
from the heart of the danger; but Edward replied that he must die some
day or other, and that he would do his best to save the magazine, and he
tried to stop some of the runaway soldiers to assist. One refused; but
another, William Ponteney, of the 3rd, replied that he was ready to die
with him, and they shook hands.

Edward Touzel then, by the help of a wooden bar and an axe, broke open
the door of the fort, and making his way into it, saw the state of the
case, and shouted to Mr. Lys on the outside, 'the magazine is on fire,
it will blow up, we must lose our lives; but no matter, huzza for the
King! We must try and save it.' He then rushed into the flame, and
seizing the matches, which were almost burnt out (probably splinters of
wood tipped with brimstone), he threw them by armfuls to Mr. Lys and the
soldier Ponteney, who stood outside and received them. Mr. Lys saw a
cask of water near at hand; but there was nothing to carry the water in
but an earthen pitcher, his own hat and the soldier's. These, however,
they filled again and again, and handed to Touzel, who thus extinguished
all the fire he could see; but the smoke was so dense, that he worked in
horrible doubt and obscurity, almost suffocated, and with his face and
hands already scorched. The beams over his head were on fire, large
cases containing powder horns had already caught, and an open barrel of
gunpowder was close by, only awaiting the fall of a single brand to
burst into a fatal explosion. Touzel called out to entreat for some
drink to enable him to endure the stifling, and Mr. Lys handed him some
spirits-and-water, which he drank, and worked on; but by this time the
officers had heard the alarm, dispelled the panic among the soldiers,
and come to the rescue. The magazine was completely emptied, and the
last smoldering sparks extinguished; but the whole of the garrison and
citizens felt that they owed their lives to the three gallant men to
whose exertions alone under Providence, it was owing that succor did not
come too late. Most of all was honor due to Edward Touzel, who, as a
civilian, might have turned his back upon the peril without any blame;
nay, could even have pleaded Mr. Lys' message as a duty, but who had
instead rushed foremost into what he believe was certain death.

A meeting was held in the church of St. Heliers to consider of a
testimonial of gratitude to these three brave men (it is to be hoped
that thankfulness to an overruling Providence was also manifested
there), when 500l. was voted to Mr. Lys, who was the father of a large
family; 300l. to Edward Touzel; and William Ponteney received, at his
own request, a life annuity of 20l. and a gold medal, as he declared
that he had rather continue to serve the King as a soldier than be
placed in any other course of life.

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