Sutler

“ His daily life was very simple. He rarely left home except to hunt, and was scarcely once a year in the sutler’s store, where the officers congregated to play billiards and cards. If the days were too stormy or too cold for hunting, as they often were for a week or more at a time, he wrote and studied for hours every day. We had the good-fortune to have a billiard-table loaned us by the sutler, and in the upper room where it was placed, my husband and I had many a game when he was weary with writing. ”

“ Sometimes the officers of a regiment sympathized in such a movement, if they thought the sutler’s exactions deserved a rebuke. When this was the case, it was no easy task to find the criminals, for the officers were very blind and stupid, or, if the culprits were detected, they were quietly reminded that if they were foolish enough to get caught they must suffer the penalty. But sutlers, like other people, profited by the teachings of experience, and, if they had faults, soon mended them, so that late in the war they rarely found it necessary to beg deliverance from their friends. ”

“ Do what he could, the Sutler was ever fated to get himself disliked. A boy is a series of accidents at best. Some of the recruits in their haste to enlist forgot to provide themselves with a girl to leave behind. Those persons, unnerved by the bewildering entanglements of Hardee's tactics, and with no restorative compensations, were never satisfied. They were iron-jawed steam-talkers of calamity, perpetually assailing the walls of rebellion with huge explosions of wrath, and the flaps of the Sutler's tent with the roar of their grumbling. ”

“ It was with a feeling of considerable importance that Sandy surveyed the interior of the sutler’s 139 store. The proprietor looked curiously at him, as if wondering why so small a boy should turn up alone in that wilderness; and when the lad asked for letters for the families up the river, Mullett’s, Sparkins’s, Battles’s, Younkins’s, and his own people, the sutler said: “Be you one of them Abolitioners that have named your place after that man Whittier, the Abolition poet? I’ve hearn tell of you, and I’ve hearn tell of him. And he ain’t no good. ”

“ The sutler seldom enjoyed much respect, as how could he when he flourished and fattened on our hungry stomachs? Of course, if a man spent the whole of his month's pay for ginger-cakes and sardines, why it was his own fault. ”

“ In the fall of the year a persimmon tree on the roadside would halt a column and detain it till the last persimmon disappeared.
The sutler's wagon, loaded with luxuries, which was so common in the Federal army, was unknown in the Army of Northern Virginia, for two reasons: the men had no money to buy sutlers' stores, and the country no men to spare for sutlers. The nearest approach to the sutler's wagon was the "cider cart" of some old darkey, or a basket of pies and cakes displayed on the roadside for sale. ”

“ Among the French, according to the present establishment of their army, a sutler is a soldier or inferior officer, who is authorised to follow head quarters, and to be constantly with the corps to which he is attached. ”

“ Far at the rear of the walled enclosure, where, in deference to the manners and customs of war as observed in the good old days whereof our seniors tell, the sutler's establishment was planted within easy hailing-distance of the guard-house, there was still the sound of modified revelry by night, and poker and whiskey punch had gathered their devotees in the grimy parlors of Mr. Finkbein, and here the belated ones tarried until long after midnight, as most of them were [Pg 168] bachelors and had no better halves, as had Doyle, to fetch them home "out of the wet." ”

“ The rich man unlearned in logic hires logic in form of a lawyer to prove anything it is profitable to have proven. So a Sutler, destitute of arms, knows that his armed compatriots will rescue his appetizing goods from the enemy's most ferocious onslaughts, howbeit but to be skinned and skimmed by themselves next moment before his horror-smitten face, with comments recordable only in violation of several salubrious enactments for the suppression of blasphemy. ”

“ If the descendants of the Sutler are snobs and sneaks and shams, social swells and moral lepers, with breath sweetly perfumed and hearts bitter as Peruvian bark tempered with aloes, they owe no part of their equivocal character or position to the influence of wealth derived from him, for he had none. Thus by his lack of lucre to bequeath, he has avoided many horrible and torturing responsibilities. For a man who has been ruined by a woman there is no law and no judge. ”

“ Even the Sutler, of whom we have been treating subjectively and perhaps too unceremoniously herein, when reduced to his objective individual status, has often supplied material for illustrating the highest grade of patriotic heroism. The Sutlership was an agency not devoid of utility, not without the noblest possibilities, by no means unworthy of honor. Let no poet of the war, sitting in the refreshment of the foliage of his phrases and sipping the coolness of the gases of his gall, dare ignore137 these patent, blatant truths of history. ”

“ While here one of our Lieutenants, named Bittner, got into a quarrel with the sutler, and, taking about ten men with their carbines, went to the sutler’s tent and ordered his men to tear it down, which they proceeded to do when the sutler came out with a revolver and blazed away at Bittner’s head, putting a bullet through his jaw, into his throat, whereupon Bittner’s men opened fire on the sutler with their carbines and the sutler ran for his life, the men chasing him and firing as fast as they could, and managed to put a bullet through the sutler’s lungs from rear to front. ”

“ Soon after ten o’clock on the night of the 23d, a sutler who was established near our corps, was charged, his tent was torn down and his goods confiscated to the last cookie. The owner (an ex-cavalry officer) made a great defence, wounding some of the boys. But what could one man do with one little revolver, when faced by two or three hundred veterans of many a bloody military and whiskey campaign? He was overpowered by the gallant veterans and forced to flee for his life. Of course the guard appeared after the mischief was done, the battle won and the wolves had gone to their dens. ”

“ No sutler shall be permitted to sell any kind of liquors or victuals, or to keep their houses or shops open for the entertainment of soldiers, after nine at night, or before the beating of the reveilles, or upon Sundays, during divine service or sermon, on the penalty of being dismissed from all future sutling. ”

“ Even our half-breed scouts refuse to make further trial. They say Red Cloud's people cover the land in every direction. Our woodchoppers only work under heavy guard. The contractors, freighters and workmen threaten to strike unless they get their money. The sutler refuses them further credit. The quartermaster has paid out every cent and says his requisition for ten thousand dollars was ordered filled, and the money ought to have been here a week ago. ”

“ The sutlers alone venture to trade, and they sell stolen goods.”
“The neighborhood of my ward continues to be pillaged by soldiers of the 3rd Corps who, not satisfied with taking from the unfortunate inhabitants hiding in the cellars the little they have left, even have the ferocity to wound them with their sabers, as I have repeatedly witnessed.” ”

“ Well, then, we are all well. My father is constantly in the highest state of excitement over present events. The victory of Custozza fills him with radiant pride. He behaves as if he had won it himself. In any case he regards the splendour of that day as so bright that the reflection which falls on him as an Austrian and a general makes him completely happy. Lori, too, whose husband, as you know, is with the Army of the South, writes me a letter of triumph about this same Custozza. Do you recollect, Frederick, how jealous I was for a quarter of an hour about this same good Lori? ”

“ But this did not satisfy Felix Merckel.
"Father," he said, late one evening when the old landlord was counting the cash taken during the day, "I can't bear to think that scoundrelly cur holds the rank of Royal Prussian officer as I do. I am ashamed to have served with him. Our army doesn't want to be associated with people like him. It drags the cockade through the gutter, not to speak of the sword-knot. I know what I'll do; I'll call him out and shoot him."
He stretched his legs on the settle, twisting his cavalry moustache with a bland smile. ”

“ Herr Merckel already felt he had cause to congratulate himself on the result of his stirring oration.
"No, brave Schrandeners," he went on, "such a scandal must not be tolerated! The army must be purged of this black spot; otherwise you will be ashamed, instead of proud, of calling yourselves Prussian soldiers."
"Kill him! kill him!" cried several voices at once.
"No, dear friends," he replied, with his unctuous smirk. "You mustn't always be talking of killing. I, as your Mayor, cannot countenance that," shaking a warning fat forefinger at them; "but I can give you wiser counsel. ”

“ At Custozza we have gained a victory, children, more glorious than any but one. I have always said it: Lombardy must become ours! Are you not delighted? I regard the war as already decided; for if we get done with the Italians, who do at any rate set a regular trained army in the field against us, we shall not find it hard to deal with these ‘tailors’ apprentices’. This Landwehr—it is really an impudence—but it is just of a piece with the whole Prussian{222} conceit to take the field against regular armies with such stuff. ”

“ Self-defence, which is enjoined on us, and righteous retribution, my dear Martha. Do you think that our people like the bullets of their needle-guns? Our brave fellows have to be exposed, like defenceless cattle in a slaughter-house, to this murderous weapon. But we are too numerous, too disciplined, too warlike, not to conquer these ‘tailors’ for all that. At the beginning one or two failures have taken place; that I admit. Benedek ought to have crossed the Prussian frontier at once. I have my doubts whether this choice of a general was quite a happy one. ”

“ Sedan! “The Emperor Napoleon has given up his sword.”
The news overwhelmed us. Now there had really occurred a great, an historical catastrophe. The French army beaten, its leader checkmated. Then the game was over, won triumphantly by Germany. “Over! over!” I shouted. “If there were people who have the right to call themselves citizens of the world they might illuminate their windows to-day. If we had temples of Humanity yet, Te Deums would have to be sung in them on this occasion—the butchery is over!”
“Do not rejoice too soon, my darling,” said Frederick in a warning tone. ”

“ The bloodless laurel is by far the more lovely.”
“But, my dear baron,” said my aunt at this point, “I have never heard a soldier speak so. What becomes, then, of the ardour of battle, of the warlike fire?”
“Dear lady, those are feelings not at all unknown to me. It was by them that I was animated when as a youngster of nineteen I took the field for the first time. But when I had seen the realities of butchery, when I had been a witness of the bestialities which are connected with it, my enthusiasm evaporated, and I went into my subsequent battles, not with pleasure, but with resignation.” ”

“ The needle-gun, the cursed needle-gun, mows our troops down by whole ranks at a time. The two great army corps of the enemy, that commanded by the Crown Prince and that under Prince Fr. Karl, have joined, and are pressing forward against Münchengrätz.” Thus sounded the terrible news, and my father communicated it with as great a degree of lamentation as he had shown joy in telling us the victorious news from Custozza. But his confidence was not yet shaken.
“Let them come, all of them, all, into our Bohemia, and be annihilated there, to the last man. ”

“ But if war is to break out again, you are no longer involved in it; and Rudolf too is not threatened, since he is not going to be a soldier.”
“But if, according to Minister To-be-sure’s information, every man should be obliged to share in the defence——”
“Oh, nonsense. So what I mean is, we will travel; we will bring up our Rudolf to be a pattern man; we will follow our noble aim—the propaganda of peace; and we—we will love each other!”
The carnival this same year brought with it once more balls and pleasures of all sorts; but my mourning kept me away from all such things. ”

“ The enemy has for a long time been pluming himself upon his quick-firing needle gun; but I think, my men, that will not do him much good. We shall most likely leave him no time for that, but charge him home at once with the bayonet and the butt. As soon as, with God’s help, the enemy has been beaten and compelled to retreat, we shall follow on his traces, and you will rest from your toils in the foeman’s country, and demand in the amplest measure those refreshments which a victorious army will have fully merited.
Finally Prince Frederick Charles says:—
Soldiers! ”

“ About this time the rumour also prevailed that the King of Prussia had gone mad from despair at the condition of his army.
Nothing but monstrous things were heard of. The excitement,{399} the fever, of the populace increased hourly. The war “là-bas” had ceased to be regarded as an armed promenade. It was felt that the forces which had been let loose were now bringing something terrible on the world. Nothing was spoken of but armies annihilated, princes driven mad, diabolical hordes, war to the knife. ”